Beetle Shells and Antenna - The Dung Beetle Knight's Gear Suite (Patreon)

There is of course an old management adage that revolves around the use of carrots and sticks, a rather frustrating and backward way of thinking that suggests people will only do their required work if they are given a system of rewards and punishments. It is, of course, complete codswollop. Scientific studies have demonstrated time and time again that if you cover people's basic needs (water, food, home, clothing, entertainment) they will naturally move towards doing work because for most people there is an inherent drive to fill time with creating, building, learning and other constructive activities. Without this inbuilt drive we would not be where we are, with thousands of years of iterative knowledge built ontop of each other and passed on through language.

It is, however, a very useful and simplistic tool to help understand how players engage with sandbox games on a basic level, when given time and the ability to communicate with each other players will eventually figure out what the best routes and options are in each aspect of the game environment, how to break portions of it, how to be efficient and most of all, what are the most fun and enjoyable aspects of the game experience.

When it comes to each individual monster in the game, one can break them down into the risks (sticks) and rewards (carrots) and you will find that the most popular and commonly praised monsters have a very good balance between these two aspects. If a monster is hard and sometimes frustrating, it doesn't automatically mean it will be considered a 'bad monster'. The Slenderman, Gorm, Butcher, Sunstalker and the very subject of this piece are wonderful examples of a perfect balance between heavy stick and juicy carrot. In contrast you can also get monsters who are far, far too much stick for the tiny carrot like the King's Man, Phoenix or Spidicules and even monsters who have little stick and a huge amount of carrot aka Farming Monsters (Screaming Antelope, The Hand and the Flower Knight).

In short, whenever you consider a monster, you want to consider not how hard it is, but if the rewards you are getting are in close balance to the monster and they can do exciting things, then the monster is going to be an interesting and engaging part of your campaign experience.

The Dung Beetle Knight is one of the pillarstones of that particular design. It has a fascinating level of difficulty to both the fight and the gear construction that keeps it being something you will come back to time and time again. I think it will be a long time before anything comes close to replacing this superb piece of balance, theme and design. As a standalone expansion without considering any other expansion synergies the Dung Beetle Knight is hard to beat (but if you're using two expansions the Dragon King + Sunstalker are still the best pair, especially because of how they synergize with the Slenderman, Manhunter and Spidicules).

This week we are going to drill into the carrot with a detailed look at all the various rewards you get from hunting the Dung Beetle Knight. Starting with a non-gear benefit in the Black Harvest!

Harvester of Sorrows

The Black Harvest is a unique and interesting spin on the way that the settlement is handled in the same way that Silk weaving also changes your settlement. The Black Harvest comes from the Subterranean Agriculture innovation card, which is gained by defeating just a single L1 Dung Beetle Knight and is one of the major arguments for always having a DBK in the campaign, even if you don't plan to hunt it for its gear you could hunt it once to gain the access to agriculture plus some resources to use as generic options elsewhere.

This is because the Black Harvest has benefits outside of purely trying to get access to DBK or Promotional Gear. So, let us get into the weeds on it.

The first step to the Black Harvest is to Prepare the Farm, this is done by allocating a number of survivors to the job. Now you have in essence two real options on this one, if you are fine with a 4 year cycle then I'd honestly recommend just sticking one survivor you dislike on the job and hooving up the endeavours from Graves when they die farming. However, if you want the 3 year cycle then you should be sticking at least 10 in there so the average roll on a d10 (5.5) will score a success.

There is a bit of a serious issue in respect to this matter though, the three year cycle puts vermin obsession on every single survivor involved in the farming (which isn't too bad as you can just reuse them in 3 years) but it also puts it on ALL departing survivors this lantern year, that means if you encounter a bug patch in the showdown, you're dead. This is due to the changes in how Doomed was updated, previously Vermin Obsession was awkward, but you could handle it by yourself, in 1.5 Doomed stops you from doing anything at all, so Vermin Obsession on all survivors in the showdown + a bug patch = no-one can remove the bug patch and they all die.

The obvious step to undertake is to reduce the odds of this happening by picking a departing monster with no bug patches (so avoid the DBK and Screaming Antelope), but there is a monster that has absolutely no random terrain at all – the Sunstalker – this is the perfect creature to go and hunt after setting up a 3 year Black Harvest, so if you have it as an option, you should do that. Otherwise I believe it is best to just avoid the 3 year harvest and just have one poor farmer do the job all by his lonesome.

In respect of encasing the gear, I've written in full detail about how the cycles of calcification work in previous posts, you can catch them here:

• - Part 1 
• - Part 2 

The Black Harvest itself can also have its level increased by spending additional Preserved Causting Dung (once per settlement phase) up to a maximum level of three. You can do this in the year that you Underground Sow, so it's pretty easy to achieve. The main thing you want to think about here is the benefits you want to get from the harvest.

Level 1 = 2x Fresh Acanthus, 1x White Lion resource (if the gatherer has Legendary Lungs) and Departing Survivors gain +2 survival

Level 2 = Motion Sickness Disorder (unless gatherer has Zero Prescence), Departing Survivors gain +2 Survival, departing survivors can consume to gain +1 armor on all locations.

Level 3 = Departing survivors can consume to gain +1 armor on all locations, Departing survivors gain survival = the survival limit and you can ignore 1 ingredient from any cooking receipe. 80% chance of the Death of the gatherer.

Now the simple fact is, the level 1 results are good enough for most settlements, you can convert two Preserved Caustic Dung into three resources with the aid of a Legendary Lungs survivor. The higher levels should be left for when you are crafting the relevant higher level gear because otherwise the returns are not good enough for the investment. No-one is ever swimming in DBK Dung resources, they're just too awkward and challenging to collect.

Spelunky!

There is a second area where survivors can gain resources and gear from the Dung Beetle Knight and that is the Spelunking of Death post showdown event, this event is best performed by high understanding & courage survivors who also have rerolls kicking about (at this stage it is NOT clear if Otherworldly Luck would work in the event, but caution suggests no). It is particually important that the survivors have at least 2 courage before they attempt this event, so you should avoid hunting the DBK with low courage survivors. You risk losing them and their gear if you take the gamble. You will also want pickaxe(s) – something you want when fighting the DBK anyway.

The event itself has a lot of resources, stat gains and even one item to gain. It is one of the most absurdly overpowered items available while also being a Jojo reference. That is the Hidden Crimson Jewel, and here it is.

You can't really plan for getting this item, but if you do get it you'll use it in every single hunt you undertake for the rest of the settlement's existence. It's really powerful, but not something you 'build around'.

So that leaves us with the...

Gear!

Almost every single piece of gear in the DBK suite is an incredible piece of fear that is amongst the best of its category. Weapons, Armor, Bombs, HL Control and Support Gear. It's all amazing.

Rolling Armor

Rolling Armor is unusual in that not a single piece of its set is actually classified as 'armor' with the keyword, this means that it has a bunch of unusual properties. Because the rules of Monster are not well defined, armor is worn, but if it is not armor then it is carried – this causes some weird situations that are hard to navigate.

The largest benefit it has however is that you can use any part of the armor set with any other armor set. This means that if you are using Early Iron weapons you can slip a Rainbow Wing Belt into the build and fix up that downside to only triggering 1% of the time per dice (instead of 10%).

You can also take the Century Shoulder Pads and/or Century Greaves and add them to any other  armor set in order to make the armor set more durable. This is very, very effective when you have those pieces calcified because of how many armor points they give. It's debatable if it is better than a shield, but the Ripple Pattern “dodge” edges it out for survivors who do not want to be activating block.

The Rubber Bone Harness and Scarab Circlet are the two items in the set that you likely won't bother splashing into other builds unless you have specific goals. The Rubber Bone Harness does have a few very rare combos, Superhair works quite well for example and the Circlet has some neat uses for builds that like to generate tokens and spend / regain their survival (it triggers every time your survival hits 0) Abyssal Sadist for example is a super funny combo to have with the circlet.

The armor set itself as a complete piece is also a very powerful tanking set, but it is rather generic in its design. I typically use it with a Lantern Glaive + Beacon Shield, but it is so flexible that you can use anything you want.

Weapons

The Digging Claw, Juggernaut Blade and Calcified Zanbato are all absolute powerhouse beasts in the world of weaponry, the only real shame is that two of them are both Grand Weapons so they compete for the same space.

There is no doubt that the Digging Claw and its Calcified version is the ultimate choice for any Katar user, but there are so many grand weapons that the Jugg and C.Zanbato have a lot of competition. It's worth noting that the C.Zanbato is super cheap to make – however, there's also an issue in that it is better to turn the first Zanbato you calcify into a Trash Crown (see below).

The Juggernaut Blade is hard to construct because it requires a Regenerating Blade to be gained and then calcified. You can get a Regenerating Blade by breaking a DBK's sword through a critical wound / persistent injury and that is the safest way, because the only other way to get this weapon is by hunting the L3 DBK - and we'll discuss next time why that is absolutely terrifying.

Ultimately, I consider the Digging Claw to be a top tier weapon, the other two weapns are both excellent choices, but there are other great options you can use instead – such as the Skleaver or Dragon Slayer.

DBK Errant Badge

Out of all three badges, I personally think that the Flower Knight badge is better because it gives evasion (the second gate of defense), but the DBK Errant is a close second with armor points (third gate of defense).

Tactics cards are always a great benefit for a hunt party, but they get stronger the more of them you use in the same party. This thing is just a must have though.

Trash Crown

Speaking of Must Have items, the Trash Crown is  my all time #1 top Hit Location control card, the sheer amount of depth and filtering it provides means that you can absolutely have the premium hit locations available for attacking and never bother with anything else. The set up on this item however is quite a fair bit of work, you're going to want 1 speed weapons and a spear in order to properly do the job. What happens is you just slice the hit location deck down to exactly the 1 – 2 locations you want to attack and ignore everything else (stick it in the discard), if you get stuck on the trap then you spear it with a specialist (Tempered Spear is so busted for this job) and then you get a full refresh on the deck and start again.

Add that to a lot of good defence (positioning, evasion, armor points) and you'll end up with just an amazing way of chipping monsters to pieces while hitting exactly the locations you want. It is however, a very slow and boring way of playing that may not appeal to all.

Also, notice how weird this item is, it is a head piece jewelry item that is not an accessory. It doesn't fit any part of the current existing design in the game.

Beetle Bomb

This is the only bomb in the game that does not suck, it is however ridiculously expensive and unreliable so most of the time you'll probably avoid it. However stacking -accuracy onto the monster is very powerful, which means that I'd run this if I can afford to craft it in the first place. It's a very simple item and the affinities make it a worthy inclusion.

Seasoned Monster Meat

Cheap to make, very effective at giving you survival and sweet affinities. This has a neat little piece of synergy with the Scarab Circlet. This is just honestly one of the best survival gain items in the game. There is really nothing more to say about it, it's great but not game breaking.

There are also a few other promotionally based items that should be remembered when you are considering DBK gear. The Green Helm(Green Armor) uses exclusively DBK based resources, so it is in essence a DBK item that is always available to craft if you own both expansions. It also works very well with Rolling Armor because that armor set does not have a helmet. The Nightmare EggPoots promotional plant is absurdly powerful support item that speaks for itself.

There are also a few other pattern based pieces of gear, but I think it's better to discuss all of that stuff in a separate post at some point because it turns out that APG love to include the DBK in how promotional gear works and this post is getting overly long already.

So as we can see, the DBK's carrot is very large, juicy and screams on occasion, but it is absolutely worth every moment of pain and hardship that happens during the showdown against the monster. While some of the DBK gear pieces are situational, none of them are duffers and that is honestly how things should be when you are designing a game. Either make things good, great or situational – there is no room for bad things, they should be removed and rebuilt into something situational.

What stands out most of all is just how much the DBK is adored by APG, it is clear that this monster is one of the most popular and loved ones at the design studio and it shows. If all monsters got the same level of love, attention and work on their gear as the DBK clearly did, the game would do nothing but benefit from it.