1.6 Early Game Visual Cheat Sheet (Patreon)

Here is the updated version of the Early Game Visual Cheat Sheet for 1.6.

I'm going to support this here with some discussion on what's changed and what's stayed the same.

Innovation

As before, it still remains optimal to hold off from innovating for as long as you are comfortable. Yes, you have a limited amount of innovations you can make per campaign and each skipped one reduces the total amount. But, gear is more important than innovations for the first few hunts, you have little survival so outside of Drums giving defensive benefits, most of the options you'd innovate are worse than just spending the three resources on a weapon, an armor piece and a lucky charm/half of a Monster Grease.

It is also important to remember, that you can catch up on missed innovations early on by saving enough to innovate in Nemesis fight years. This is a little risky with The Butcher, because it will archive resources if you lose, but against the King's Man and Hand - you have a wonderful opportunity.

Nothing has changed in the Innovation priority queue, Symposium remains the number one pick, with Drums/Music still the second best and then getting the survival actions online is third and really pays off once you have a big pool of survival. Ammonia is as essential as always, but you want to wait on this one in case you can get it for free during a White Lion hunt.

Gear Saves Lives.

The best early game weapons haven't changed, Bone Darts is the optimal generic weapon, though the Bone Sword is still a reasonable choice. The Bone Axe has become even worse as an option, because monster grease's increase in cost means Organs are even more precious than they were before - whereas bones remain the most disposable early game resource outside of scrap.

Bones

The Bone Club, is an exception choice for someone who has a LOT of bones, or likes to invest early in something that they can use for many years. Good AI management effectively negates the downside of the Bone Club and the fact that Lantern Armor can give it Sharp means that in the very late game of the core campaign the Bone Club can hold its own against most Blacksmith weapons.

Hide

Hide remains best invested into Rawhide Armor, to the point that I would even put Perfect Hide into Rawhide if I felt I couldn't get to the Barber Surgeon location quickly enough and spending it here would help complete a Rawhide Set.

You definitely want at least 2-3 Rawhide Arrmor sets, and the other armor sets will normally be Leather. At this point I've found that in the end, in the Core Game only. I tend now to have one Leather, one Rawhide, one to two Phoenix armor sets and zero to one Lantern Armor sets. It depends on how I feel about the heavy keyword, because that darn thing is still such a huge risk thanks to the hunt phase and the settlement event card phase.

Organs

There is no change to what is pretty much the essential generic Organ options. You should be crafting as many Monster Grease as you can afford, at least 2, but you'll see a benefit from even the third or possibly fourth depending on playstyle.

Lucky Charm remains the best Organ option early on and you'll want probably 2 of them and Fecal Salve is incredible, especially given how it can completely shut down the Butcher's targeting and force it to just Instinct. However, this isn't something you can use on every survivor early on due to limited Survival totals. But it is incredible to have one full support survivor be not targetable for most of the Butcher's actions.

Perfect Basic Resources

These new resources are quite precious and rare. My preference for each one is as follows:

• First Perfect Bone →  Zanbato

• Second Perfect Bone → Zanbato or First Aid Kit

• First Perfect Organ → Blue Charm (This is a situation where I would then craft Screaming Armor)

• Perfect Hide → Scavenger Kit or towards completing an armor set.

White Lion

The White Lion remains simply a source of the Cat Eye Circlet and some great weapon options. The Cat Gut Bow, Claw Head Arrow, Lion Beast Katar and King Spear are still all staples of campaigns that don't include the Gorm as a Quarry Option.

The armor set remains a meme, you can do fun things with it and the Red Charm, but mostly it's only good when you are playing People of the Sun and you also have the Sun Lion White Armor beta content set card.

The Gigalion is more of a mid game monster, so we'll talk about that some time in the future, when I give you a Mid to Late Game only Cheat Sheet. Depends on the demand for it.


Screaming Antelope

The Screaming Armor has been hit with so many broad and sweeping nerfs that there is now exactly one situation where I'd use it. If I got an early Perfect Organ and crafted a Blue Charm I would pivot one build into Screaming Armor + Spear and construct a survivor who aims to reset the HL deck with spear specialist plus blue charm.

As an aside, I really do wish the Screaming Bracers hadn't had their ability to spawn acanthus completely removed, this would have left the Screaming Antelope armor as an interesting alternative support set instead of constantly using Rawhide for support builds.

Outside of that, the three items I consider really worth making from the Screaming Antelope are Dried Acanthus for injury protection, Blood Paint because it's one of the best offensive/defensive supporting items out there → it basically turns one of your survivors into either a DPS survivor and a Tank survivor in one or two DPS survivors in one body.

The Brain Mint is an interesting option because of its affinities and the way that it can help you remove bleeding, remove negative tokens and stand up. In games with the Harvestman Fighting Art (expansion card) it is amazing at cleaning up any negative movement tokens you have gathered.

Speed Powder does have build applications, especially with expansion gear, however - it's very random if you get this item early, or even if you get it at all.

The Harvest Ritual Forbidden Dance/Stone Circle action remains REALLY strong, it's a great way of filtering to get to Perfect Bones/Hide/Organs. So it's always worth killing at least one Screaming Antelope because Forbidden Dance is an innovation you'll want most campaigns anyway.

The Second Tier Basic Locations

I consider the Leather Worker, Barber Surgeon and the Weapon Crafter to all be early game → transitional early/mid game locations. You can rush any one of these fairly quickly if you are using Deadly/Lucky builds that generate extra resources.

Leather Worker

The best Leather Worker item remains the Round Leather Shield, with Leather Armor coming in a close second. You will generally have one or two durable survivors using either Leather Armor + Shield + Zanbato or Leather Armor + Shield + Counterweighted Axe. The alternative build here is Leather Armor + Shield + Blood Paint + Lion Beast Katar/Skullcap Hammer for a "Bruiser Build" (Bruisers are an archtype that is close range, tanky and deals moderate damage. They're basically the middle ground between tanks and DPS and they can function as either role, but not often as effectively as pure specialists).

I do love a Blood Paint, Katar Master, Bruiser as a main tank. It's a joy.

Weapon Crafter

The Weapon Crafter lost access to the Phoenix Gear, which was a good design move. However ALL of the new Weapon Crafter Gear introduced in 1.6 is bad. The Scrap Rebar in particular is a huge failure because it doesn't work properly with a Zanbato or Scrap Spear (it messes up affinities too much because of its positional requirement). But the Scrap Spear is also a failure due to its ridiculous price, 

You might sometimes build a Scrap Sword/Lucky Charm build, but it's really hard to make it work in the core game. So it's really more of a meme.

Ultimately, I think you can skip the Weapon Crafter early game now unless you get a Perfect Bone for a Zanbato or you don't have a good tank weapon and want the Counterweighted Axe. Outside of these two options, the location just doesn't offer enough value to a young settlement most of the time.

Barber Surgeon

The new kid on the block, previously this location was locked behind the L2 Screaming Antelope Fight, the switch here has moved this location into the main meta, and it's brought a bunch of interesting pieces to rush. The most powerful of these are the Blue Charm, Scavenger Kit and First Aid Kit. There is mid game uses for the Almanac and there's fun memery to be had with the Red Charm. 

The biggest bonus here though is access to Trepanning, which means now in 1.6 you can get rid of crippling Disorders and remove Intercranial Hemorrhages early on.

Musk bomb remains absolute garbage.

Instruments

Instruments in the Core Game remain bad, the Harvester basic hunt event wasn't changed. So they remain a 1% chance of death per basic hunt event. However, both the Whisker Harp and Rawhide Drum can do great work against Nemesis monsters. This means that Rhythm Chaser remains not as strong in the core game is it is in campaigns that include the Gorm.

And that's it. We're going to repeat this next time, but with a sheet that includes the three extra expansions that occur in the early game. The Gorm, Spidicules and the Flower Knight. That way you have a bit of a guide for what's good early game in every combination!