The "Legendary" Hot Take - Part One (Patreon)

So the 1.6 Update is starting to arrive and as is tradition for these things I will be taking my first 'hot take' look at everything. This initial take is with only minimal testing; use of the gear in proxy showdowns + based on my understanding of the game and the previously optimal pathways through the game.

The 1.6 Update's core ethos is to provide mostly updates for the core game experience; but there are a few additional things included such as promotional cards; expansion bug fixes and some other things which were considered too important to wait for Campaigns of Death to come out. Therefore this update is based around the following items:

• White Lion
• Screaming Antelope
• Phoenix
• Organ Grinder
• Weapon Crafter
• Barber Surgeon
• Blacksmith
• Stone Circle
• Plumery
• Rare Gear
• Basic Resource Deck
• Exhausted Lantern Hoard
• Dung Beetle Knight
• Flower Knight
• The Tyrant (Dragon King/People of the Stars)
• Lonely Tree
• Lion Knight
• People of the Sun (Sunstalker)
• The Trap Mechanics
• Promotionals

These various updates break down into a few different categories; error fixes, location switches, nerfs/downgrades (for various reasons) and new gear. So in order to analyse this fully we're going to be methodical.

I don't have copies of the various cards myself to photograph, so you will have to refer back to the original link to check here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a84BHSRcyZNdMr8CPRaqmVSdYAqb1evq6ppr6vYhis0/edit

Error Fixes

• Dung Beetle Knight (Hit Locations/AI Cards)
• Disorder Deck (Vermin Obsession)
• The Tyrant (Reference Card/Showdown)
• Lonely Tree (Reference Card/Showdown)
• Lion Knight (Stage/Villain)
• Life String (Missing Resource)

This is the simplest category to walk through; there were a huge amount of errors in the Dung Beetle Knight and Lonely Tree expansions. So the changes to the DBK, Lonely Tree and Tyrant are all there to make sure that missing elements are restored to the place they were always intended to be. Likewise with the Life String; though mechanically there's absolutely no need for that resource card to be needed, you generate it during the settlement phase and pretty much stash it into settlement storage until its time to try and make warriors of the sun. But at least we get to see what it looks like?

The Lion Knight and Vermin Obsession changes on the other hand are very different. These were things that worked as intended in 1.31; but changes to Doomed in 1.5 meant that suddenly being the Villain stopped you doing things; this was quickly patched when I raised the point to Travis (from TechRaptor) who relayed it to Adam. Later on I raised another issue with the Vermin Obsession changes directly to Adam, things did not go as smoothly that time (because Adam likes Travis and doesn't seem to care for me) – initially Adam indicated that he had no intention of changing things, but due to how the Black Harvest works (I've mentioned this previously, but departing to hunt anything other than a Sunstalker after a Black Harvest can result in an automatic TPK in 1.5 due to a bug patch spawning) I am really happy that in the end Vermin Obsession was brought back to being more in line with how it was in 1.31. It's both mechanically and thematically good now.

So short story aside, all of these updates are really good. The only criticism that can be levelled is that they should have been dealt with before 1.5 went to print because they were all raised during the KS campaign – I still do not understand the logic behind refusing to update the prints for the new expansions, but at the end of the day it has been fixed and that is what matters.

Next up are the various other changes, I'm going to pace through these by individual in game category and discuss what they mean for campaigns.

The White Lion

In addition to the changes to the White Lion's hunt event a major alteration has occurred. The Zanbato has been decoupled away from the White Lion – you no longer craft it with White Lion resources. This does a few things; first of all it means that you do not need the White Lion to make use of the Dung Beetle Knight, it also helps make the Weapon Crafter a generic location useable for campaigns where the White Lion (and as we'll see later Phoenix) are not available.

But the White Lion itself is a big loser as a consequence of this change. The Zanbato was one of the main draws along with early game weapons, a harp (maybe), an arrow and the Cat's Eye Circlet. At this point I am concerned that players without the Gigalion expansion are going to rapidly lose reasons to hunt the White Lion – I certainly see no point in hunting the L2+ White Lion except for the purpose of getting hide. This is a sharp contrast to expansion monsters like The Gorm or even Spidicules who both do reward you for returning to higher level versions with unique gear that you might not otherwise be able to get (it's incredibly difficult to get the Spidicules rings from the L1 Spidicules).

I guess we should all be happy that the Cat's Eye Circlet didn't get nerfed.

The Screaming Antelope

Our second big (biggest) loser is the Antelope; it was expected that the Screaming Antelope's gear would see some nerfs. However, I don't think anyone would have bet on the sheer volume and extreme nature of the nerfs we have seen, but before we go into those we should also look at the way it has been decoupled from the core game, which is both a benefit to the game as a whole, but also a buff for the Spidicules expansion. (Though Cooking is still partially useless when you don't have the antelope around).

Previously the Barber Surgeon was directly tied to the Screaming Antelope, without the antelope you could not build this location at all, and that meant a great deal of content tended to be locked up for players. We'll look into how the Barber Surgeon benefits later, but what it does mean for the Screaming Antelope is we've gained earlier access to Brain Mint, Speed Powder and the Elder Earrings.

That's good stuff, both the Brain Mint and Elder Earrings are useful tools for a settlement to have access to and in particular the Earrings are a big winner. The earlier you can get that item, the stronger it is because of how it lets you speed up the growth of hunters and get them online for weapon proficiencies faster. It's also great for survivors who are not looking to complete a mastery.

There is also one other indirect buff to the Stone Circle location in that the Harvest Ritual (which was already very strong) now allows you to search for additional Perfect Basic Resources (more on this later).

However, the price paid for this is an astronomical level of downgrades for the Screaming Armor. Now there is no doubt at all that changes needed to happen to this set, it was far too strong for when you could get it. But the changes we've seen are just too much; the helm, bracers, waist and armor set bonus card have all been nerfed.

The Screaming Horns needed a change; there was an unintended loophole where deaf insane survivors could effectively gain unlimited insanity. This is one of three unlimited insanity loops in the game (Butcher and Gorm have the other two) and it is good that it has been closed down. It has however also taken a reduction to its armor points and I think that is both a flavour and a mechanical fail. The Horns were the hardest part to construct due to needing a single one of resource and they were the only part of the outfit made of bone.

The Screaming Skirt has also been nerfed with a reduction to its armor points (which is fine); but the Screaming Bracers have experienced the most dramatic nerf with the removal of their excellent and interesting Acanthus Plant spawning ability (it's been pushed onto a special L3+ Showdown + Pottery ability called 'Astute'). Finally, the armor set card itself has also had a reduction in the armor point bonus, meaning that this armor set is almost down to a weaker state than when it was released back in 1.31.

For a brief moment, with the right nerfs the Screaming Armor set could have been a viable alternative to Rawhide armor for a support style survivor. Its combination of healing through Acanthus and insanity protection would have given it a unique place in the game and shaken up the meta a bit. Instead Screaming Armor is now something that spear bot players will use for a bit before they switch to Dragon/Phoenix Armor. In short Screaming Armor is pretty much White Lion/Gorment Armor tier now, it's too expensive for what you get and you're better off skipping on it and making more leather. This is essentially a reductive change that has closed up gaming space rather than opened it up with more strategies. In other words, outside of memes and fur based builds all optimal early game armor progression in the game until the release of the Gambler's Chest is now: Rawhide → Leather → Endgame Armor.

That's the opposite of what 1.6 should have tried to do; we should have seen reasonable adjustments to Screaming Armor and buffs to White Lion + Phoenix Armor. Phoenix Armor remains viable in core game only; but as soon as you add any equivalent expansion monster (Sunstalker, Dragon King, DBK, Lion Knight hybrid armor sets) then there is absolutely no reason to run full Phoenix armor either (And Lantern Armor remains at most a one set per settlement suit).

The Phoenix

Last of the core game monsters, the Phoenix has always been a case of too much stick for too little carrot. The Pheonix Helm, Plackart, Hollowpoint arrow, Feather Shield and Arc Bow have all given strong arguments for hunting, but most of the other options are either weaker than alternatives, or just downright bad – some of them to the point that they actively kill their users.

The simple stuff is the lateral sliding of the Finger of God, Blood Sheath and Rainbow Katana to where they always should have been – as a part of the set. But this represents a missed chance, because the Finger of God has always been not worth crafting. If you get a weapon from a L1 version of a monster; it should be good enough to be worth considering using against the L2 version with a little support. The Finger of God is about good enough to use against the L1 Phoenix and sorely lacks in all other aspects. Just a couple more points of strength would have made all the difference here, but sadly this is a weapon that can continue to be disregarded.

The Rainbow Katana/Blood Sheath combo remains a fun, silly meme weapon pairing to run. It's not really good, but it can get work done, so sure – there was no need to revise it. But before we get on to what was improved, several notable issues were not looked at. Deja Vu remains a card that just should not exist in this game at all; it has such a wide range of power swings from killing the entire hunt party on the first turn to helping create settlements that can never lose against anything in a campaign (boring). But yet, here it is and the L1 Phoenix can pop it out at times still. Absolutely foolish for this to have been left in. In addition, none of the armor pieces that needed affinity rebalancing got anything at all.

Phoenix Armor remains in the position of 'well I guess you make it if you don't have the Dragon King' and that's kind of it – it is a good offensive, but very flawed armor set in a game with other armor sets that are good without any flaws. And if you want to use the Plackart, then get Warlord Armor. And the Hours Ring remains as problematic as it ever was before. They really needed to build a third version of that and release it here.

But with all of the omissions aside; let's look at what was actually changed. The Hollow Sword and Sonic Tomahawk both received updates of varying quality. I'm going to take the short version, the Hollow Sword is not quite playable while the Sonic Tomahawk is pretty good. Frail is a massive problem for a weapon, cause if it breaks then your weapon trainer is left without a weapon for the rest of the showdown (we don't have room for back up weapons on our grids due to armor taking up 5 slots) and if you want to replace it you often have to spend an entire lantern year hunting the monster to get the resources again. The Hollow Sword is nota cheap weapon to construct, it needs five resources, two of which are hide and the hollow wing bone isn't super common in the Phoenix's deck either. So despite it getting a decent strength boost and the addition of dagger as a weapon type, this thing is only really going to be used by players who avoid super-dense monsters as much as possible.

Frail is such a really awful ability in how it punishes you for being rash and aggressive; slow, turtling plays are something that it is clear the design team doesn't like us doing. But Frail hard forces that style in a way that almost nothing else does. I mean heck, if the Hollow Sword cost 1x hollow wing bone and 1x bone I'd be saying 'it's alright to use until it breaks, try to get a back up!' but it's so much more expensive and the hollow wing bone is also required for the Sonic Tomahawk.

We're going to come back to frail more a bit later on, don't worry.

The Sonic Tomahawk is the main reason why the Hollow Sword just isn't worth your time, it also requires the hollow wing bone, but the end weapon is just better on almost every front. It's a better weapon type, it actually has affinities, it's got the correct level of baseline strength and it even has additional abilities if you want to meme with it and swing massive levels of speed in conjunction with Dragon/Phoenix/Cycloid Scale armor. This is a weapon I can honestly see myself using, especially paired with Cycloid Scale – that's a fun time even if it isn't optimal.

So that's a major failing here, sure the Sonic Tomahawk requires an iron, but it's not going to break and go away the first time it encounters some resistance. That matters a lot in this game and as such the Sonic Tomahawk is the only real winner in the Phoenix situation. Which is kind of rough.

Organ Grinder

The only one of the first tier settlement locations to get updated was the Organ Grinder, this update has two things baked into it. The first is that instead of opening up the Stone Circle, the Organ Grinder now leads into the Barber Surgeon, that's just a solid and sensible change that I approve of.

The second changes are to the monster grease, for a start the item gains the Flammable keyword; which doesn't have much impact in the game because the main thing that archives flammable gear is the Sunstalker and that monster already deters you from wearing soluble gear anyway. Not much mechanical impact there.

Instead the large part of the change is the update to Monster Grease's crafting cost. It's doubled in price from 1x organ to 2x organ and that's a very reasonable, strong and acceptable price increase. Considering that Monster Grease is one of the strongest items in the game and it scales into the late game with its affinity unlock ability it always was underpriced. The main thing this change will do is shape players more towards my style of play; which is running just one or two monster grease on the main tank/brusier survivors and avoiding it on the DPS/Support survivors. So power-wise this shouldn't harm settlements, but it does push everyone even harder towards the specialised 'class' style of survivor play. It really sucks for settlements that want to do 4x Jack of All Trades survivors in particular.

It's also worth noting that nothing has been done to the Bone Smith and Skinnery gear. This means that we're still in the Rawhide meta and will remain there for the duration, it also means that the best early game weapons remain 3x Bone Darts and 1x Bone Club. Bone Swords are fine as a disposable weapon due to their low cost, but Bone Axes have become even worse due to the increased pressure on early game organs and bone daggers remain a meme weapon.

So yeah, the early game meta as we can see from here is not in a great place now, but the core game locations have been cleaned up in a way that means they're easier to slot in and out in a modular fashion. It's now significantly cleaner for homebrew content to change out an entire core game location and also cleaner for the official rules to swap out the core monsters as needed – Cooking and a few other specific edge cases still need to be inspected and revised.

There's still a LOT to unpack here, so I'm going to have to continue this series next week; but given that list above and the sheer number of changes and new items it's just wasn't feasible to get this done within three thousand words anyway. So next Friday we'll carry on and see if we can get all of the rest looked at in a similar level of detail.