Grumpy Grimmory's Grim Gusk Gougers - Beta Content Review (Patreon)

Guilt is the force that drives Grimmory. Betrayals mar his conscience, sins for which he can never fully atone. His shoulders are heavy with death and his heart is lost in the past. His Knives serve two masters. Grimmory believes he is the stronger of them.

As the beta miniature content continues to come out in a more consistent and regular fashion than the kickstarter updates, we're going to dive into the latest release – Grimmony and his Gusk Knives. Again this is done with thanks to patrons timberwolf and charles who supplied the images for the game content.

Despite this content being a single pair of blades, this is an interesting one because it provides an example of promotional expansion content which is still achievable for those members of the community who are unable to get their hands on the required expansion(s). In addition, this is a case of a previously unnamed ability in the game getting its own glossary entry and ability word.

We'll dive into this one in multiple parts; first of all we'll look at the crafting cost and consider if the power level of the weapon is appropriate for the crafting difficulty. Then we'll look at the new keyword abilities that this weapon has and consider if it is a useful member of the dagger category of weapons. We'll end with a look at what items and armor sets are best used with this weapon.

Crafting Costs

The Crafting costs of this weapon have two variations; the first of these is a Gorm specific recipe and the second is a generic one. In both cases there's a new level of tracking that players need to undertake – one has to record when a bone is received from an L3 monster and track them separately from normal ones. Typically this isn't going to be a big strain right now, because lets face it, if you're going for these knives you're going to be crafting them very soon after you get your hands on the relevant bones – but it is a bit of an oddity and it suggests a future where we're having to record some resources with additional tags. It's not a huge deal to write X L3 Bones alongside the non-L3 ones, but it does represent more potential bookkeeping fatigue for players – too many things like this and it could become too much for some players to bother with. Fortunately, this is promotional material, so highly optional.

The knife design necessitates that you use both Gussy Knives; they are a somewhat unimpressive (3/6+/5/Block 1) dagger/shield before you get the second one. So the big point that has to be remembered is that you are going to end up paying this crafting cost twice in every campaign.

It's going to be more reliable to craft these weapons from the L3 Gorm because you don't need a perfect bone and an L3 Bone (plus organ & scrap) instead you simply need a dense bone from an L3 Gorm. The Gorm is something that has a high amount of Dense Bone drops, so that's the faster route – getting a Perfect Bone could occur earlier, and it lets players aim for an easier L3 monster (White Lion, Screaming Antelope) to get the weapon made. But there are other great items that are competing for that Perfect Bone, in contrast the Gorm items that want a Dense Bone have fallen off by the time you're killing an L3 Gorm – so it's less of a price.

Overall, the crafting cost is actually very fair, and the gating behind an L3 Monster is a fair decision to make; it hard counters any attempts to make this weapon earlier than intended by employing cheese strats. You can't get this bone from a dead monster terrain, you can't get it by farming an L1 version over and over – it's beat L3s or nothing.

The Abilities

The Gorm Dusk Knife comes with not one, not two, but three new abilities. One of these has appeared before, but didn't have an ability word at that time – that's Consecutive Spaces. This mechanic is already present in the Dung Beetle Knight expansion – the Fighting Art Propulsion Drive uses it. Consecutive Spaces is simply an ability telling you that you can't backtrack through other spaces in order to move around when triggered. In the context of the Gusk Knife has a few other additional steps because it's triggered by another trigger word that is locked behind using these weapons paired – Grimstep.

Grimstep triggers when you have activated a block, attack, and then the block is used during that attack. It's not a super common situation, some monsters do react with things that trigger hits, but not all. When it triggers you need to move six Consecutive Spaces (quick side note here, the bolding and captialising on the actual card seems incorrect for their usual ability conventions, yes this is a beta card but it's also a premium product – one would hope that they'd tighten their editing, but maybe that's just too much to hope for at this point).

The main intent of it is to let you to slide around the monster and get into the blind spot. However, the wording on Grimstep is a little unclear; normally there's text which states Cancel all hits now out of range (See Sunstalker Light Bending for an example of this) – but that's been omitted from the text here – which means that mechanically you can Grimstep 6 spaces away from the monster and still get to continue attacking with that +6 strength. I'm sure the intent is to allow a survivor to 'slide' around adjacent to the monster and get to a new spot (preferably the blind spot) to finish wounding other locations. But that's not how this beta card is worded – it seems like an omission, but since the Gigalion incident one can't be sure these days what the actual intent is for any design in KDM – sometimes it just feels like 'random nonsense go'.

Blindside is the more straightforward and powerful of the two abilities these knives have when they are paired. If you're attacking in the blindspot you get to downgrade all the monster's reflex reactions to be failure reactions. This is again monster dependant, monsters have a variable number of pure reflect reactions rather than wound/failure reactions. Needless to say, this is a sweet ability and it plays very well into the style that dagger users optimally would want to use. Reaction control is a space that there's a lot of room to design in.

Finally, just in case you think I'd forgotten or not noticed! This weapon is a dagger and a shield, that means it benefits from shield and dagger specialisation/mastery. This is part of what's been done to push these Paired knives so hard into the game's space – they work as both a pair of high speed, good strength daggers and a reliable shield without having to dedicate a third slot to defense. That's massive, this means you can go armor + 2x Gusset Knives and boom you've got offense and defense with just 7 slots. Leaving 2 slots more for other utility/powerhouses. This means they're great to master shield, they're fantastic offensively in the hands of a dagger master and they just do everything – even wash the dishes. There's no disputing the power of this weapon, it is pushed as heck.

I don't have an issue with the weapon being this pushed, to be honest it needed to happen for Daggers (and it still needs to happen for Whips & Thrown weapons) so I think that these knives are one of the desirable pieces of additional gear and it's worth picking at least one set up (I wouldn't even raise an eyebrow at someone having two pairs tbh).

They also have some excellent synergy with the more tactical portion of the game; specifically hit location control. And it's a different set of targets you're aiming for, instead of seeking critical wound/resource gain locations, you're looking for ones where Block can be applied and the Grimstep triggered. Later on in a campaign, where you're less leaning on heavy resource farming because you're facing L3s and most of what you're seeking are the unique and level specific resources easy wounds can be what you're seeking.

Build Synergies

So, the obvious part is noting that this weapon likes to be in the blind spot AND it doesn't have sharp naturally. This means that Cycloid Scale Armor is an ideal fit for the weapon, but also Dragon Armor and Phoenix Armor are also solid picks. Because this is a mid to late game weapon, I'd certainly be aiming to get one of these three armor sets – but it is worth also noting that this weapon has additional synergies with the White Lion Armor and has potential to make that armor set more viable when used in combination with Dagger specialisation.

The fighting art Propulsion also has some synergy with the Grimstep element; and as this is a fighting art you can gain from an innovation, so that's a consistent thing you can get. Naturally as a Dagger and Shield, the strain fighting arts Backstabber & Shieldarang are also highly synergistic, but they're not as easy to gain in a reliable fashion.

So what's left is to try and consider what additional gear you're going to bring in the final two slots that the build would have. Honestly, due to the 5 baseline strength, the Monster Tooth Necklace is a solid choice if you can get those two red affinities from your armor + other gear. Pushing these up to 7 strength is a great baseline breakpoint to build Grimstep on top and it also helps a great deal when you can't Grimstep.

Ultimately though, outside of your armor choice, there's so much inbuilt baked in design with these weapons that you're very much forced in one direction for your playstyle, so this is a nice tool to have in your arsenal, but it's not a tool that's got much style or variation outside of the one which is pre-designed for you. In short, the Gusk Knives play themselves, and if you're okay with that, they're another option that expands use of daggers. Goodness knows, we need something other than just the Cult Speaker Knife and the Acid-Tooth Daggers as a late game option and this fills that slot (and more).

So yeah, like the Sun Lion Armor before this one, these are a pushed hit.