Badar Beta Content Review (Patreon)

The Beta content miniature sales train continues, Choo choo.

Having had the White Lion, Gorm and Lantern Sword previously, Badar (name meaning: Full Moon) is our Spidicules representative – so maybe next time we'll see either a Lantern Armor, Flower Knight or Phoenix based survivor next? The White Lion, Gorm, Weapon Crafter and Lantern Sword's beta content was decent, but they were building onto elements of the game that are already well regarded. Spidicules is one of those expansions that's on the cusp of being a good one, however it needs revisions to multiple aspects before it'll become a must have expansion the way that the Gorm is.

There are four elements to this beta content, including not one, but two new Abilities added to the glossary (along with the upcoming Lantern Armor Proficiency).

We'll talk about that one when the beta content comes out.

The first of these is Cleave:

Cleave is not to be confused with Cleavage X (but it can be). This is an ability that effectively allows a one handed weapon to use a “pseudo-cumbersome” in order to gain +4 strength at the cost of becoming two-handed and slow. This is of course nothing other than a positive ability, in the situations where you're already adjacent to the monster you can cleave at effectively 'no cost' and when you need to move you can still attack without having to Dash. It's basically Improved Cumbersome and that makes it quite welcome.

This ability is, of course, directly cut and pasted from the Dark Souls/Elden Ring series, but that is not a problem because games iterate on each other and mechanics are not something that can (or should be) copyrighted. Just like in Dark Souls, this mechanic is a useful one and is a welcome addition to the game.

Then we have Sealed:

This ability represents a new space for the game's mechanics in a way that we've not seen before and it is quite an innovative step. One of the major issues with it at this point is the rules are not entirely clear. We explicitly see that Sealed (if used) replaces the weapon's specialisation and it likely replaces the Mastery also – but the text as written here is not firm enough in my opinion. People are going to wonder about the Weapon Mastery situation.

However, as Scimitars do not have a normal weapon proficiency, that doesn't matter here – in fact, in the current rules you cannot even choose Scimitar as a proficiency:

Here we're not losing any opportunities or power by choosing to unseal Badar's specific weapon, which means that for this specific example – there's no concerns about the rules ambiguities here, forgeddaboutit! Still, if Sealed becomes something that appears on weapons with valid proficiencies then we absolutely want to have clear answers to this before Campaigns of Death lands.

In general terms Sealed is an exciting ability, even if it overwrites the ability to gain mastery it's going to be something that survivors will begin to push for once the relevant mastery has already been unlocked. It's also a bonus that can be unlocked quickly, so while it has a low power ceiling, it also has a rock bottom power floor.

For the rest of this we'll be looking specifically at Badar and the Toxicimitar to see how much value he provides for a campaign.

Statistically the Toxicimitar is nothing super impressive, it's either a (2/6+/2) baseline one-handed weapon or a (1/6+/6/Cumbersome) two-handed weapon. However, that is without taking into account the old staple for making the late game more powerful and more chaotic – Sharp. Sharp turns the wounding roll from 1d10 to 2d10 and effectively means that you'll see wounding rolls clustering around a total of 11 (ignoring the fact that one of the dice creates an auto fail and success). That means you can quick hand consider that the Toxicimitar is going to wound at somewhere between 10 and 14 around half the time and reach a maximum of 21 when used one-handed. Two-handed it'll be between 16 and 20 around half the time with a maximum of 25.

As an aside, sharp is a huge a pain in the butt to shorthand if you want to really be precise because the auto-fail and auto-success results on the lead die make the the graph for what your 2d10 can roll look like this.

All of this is to say that 'the weapon is statistically appropriate for something you'd gain from a L3 Spidicules'. It's certainly a more appropriate reward for the fight than the resource needed to craft the L2 power level Silk Turban that's for sure.

That's not all the weapon does, in addition to its stats and cleave ability it has this Sealed ability. There's no real downside to pursing this if you're using the Toxicimitar because as mentioned above, it doesn't have its own proficiency. You're not even likely to use this in the same manner as the Amber Edge (which is used in conjunction with a Shield or Fist & Tooth) because you should have those two core Weapon Masteries by the time you are crafting this weapon.

However, what we get from completing the Sealed on the Toxicimitar is not going to blow the barn doors off. It's this Secret Fighting Art:

Once a round, after your attack, you get a [Move]. As a Weapon Specialisation, this would be decent, but not anything to write home about. Sure, movement is king in Kingdom Death, but it's Movement that's used during Flow Steps that really turns the tide during a showdown. Being able to Dash outside of a monster's movement range when it targets you will cancel it's attack – something we call Dash Cancelling. The Crescent Step offers a way to attack during the flow step (through Surge) and then move. However, if you're not faster than the monster, you are not going to cancel its attack. Most survivors don't get past 8 Movement (Harvestman Fight Art) and that doesn't outpace many of the late game monsters – anything with movement 8 or higher is going to still be able to keep pace with you if you are employing both Harvestman and Crescent Step. Very few L3 monsters have under 8 movement and quite a few L2 monster are movement 8+.

This does offer a cheap second Cleave attack by surging, so it's not entirely useless, but it's not going to work as well as a weapon with Reach/Range, Harvestman and Dash. There are synergies with Dancer Armor however, because it also gives you [Move] after your first attack (but only on your act). So the build that would probably best use this is one that's employing Toxicimitar + Harvestman + Dancer Armor + Propulsion Drive.

That's where the main problem occurs. This is a Secret Fighting Art (SFA) and we've only got three slots per survivor for Secret/Fighting Arts. That's the largest score against this weapon, if it was an extra card gained that was not a Fighting Art then we'd be looking at something more akin to a Weapon Specialisation.

Still, it is worth noting that a survivor can gain this Sealed ability for the SFA and then switch to a new weapon while still keeping Crescent Step. That does have some merit and potential to be investigated. You can Crescent Step while using any weapon what so ever. That application is something we'll have to spend time exploring before judging how powerful it is. But having a guaranteed way to unlock that SFA, even if it does take a little time, could be a useful tool.

The final part of the weapon's abilities we need to assess is its 'toxic' properties and affinity. The affinity is an up blue, and that makes it mostly irrelevant, but edge case it might help some other item work. Importantly the affinity doesn't help any part of the Silk Armor set, so it's mostly forgettable.

The toxic nature of the weapon however is designed to closely synergise with the Silk Armor, it strips an armor point away from all locations, while Silk Armor can activate to gain armor on all locations (potentially twice, depending on layout). But regardless of which armor set you use this with, you're going to be putting it on a survivor who isn't planning to take the role of front line tank. They're going to be a damage dealing survivor – so having 5 less armor points isn't a deal breaker for them (it absolutely is for Tanks though). The ability that the weapon gets in exchange for this loss of armor is on its third wound dealt to the monster during the showdown, the monster loses 1 movement and 1 evasion. This increases the chance that Crescent Step could take up the duty of Dash Cancelling (pushing an 8 movement monster down to 7 movement is big) while also improving the accuracy of attacks for all survivors. It's thematic, it's strong and it can't be abused beyond the intended use it has. It's a very fair ability, absolutely fair and average for the downside. So, it's balanced, but it can become a bit game distorting if combined with Hollowpoint Arrows from the Phoenix (and the Dragon Shield Quiver). Reducing monsters to 1 or 2 movement often neuters them completely.

Next, we have the crafting cost to consider. Is all of this package correctly priced for the resource cost? Well there are two possible crafting recipes:

• Spidicules: 1x Venom Sac from L3 Spidicules, 1x Iron, 1x Bone
• Generic: 1x Perfect Organ, 1x Organ from a L3 monster, 1x Iron, 1x Bone.

The Venom Sac is not an easy drop to get from a Spidicules (even an L3 one), this is because it isn't dropped by a Critical Wound Hit Location result and Spidicules doesn't drop any other resources from a Critical Wound apart from Serrated Fangs. It also has a Resource Deck stuffed with lots of 1x Individual Resources rather than plenty of duplicates. If that wasn't enough, you need 3x Venom Sacs to craft the Red Ring (and the Amber Poleaxe also needs it in the early game), so I just can't see hunting the L3 Spidicules a viable option for crafting this when compared to the generic recipe. It's honestly easier to save a Perfect Organ and then go kill a L3 White Lion/Gorm or Screaming Antelope. They're all easier showdowns than the L3 Spidicules and they're pretty much guaranteed to drop the Organ you need. This isn't the Gusk Knives, which means it does not support Spidicules expansion play the way that Grimmory does.

I think the designer of this particular crafting cost dropped the ball, they probably chose the Venom Sac for thematic reasons without considering the actual in game value of a Venom Sac and its drop rate. This is actually a common issue with monster design in the game, there often appears no value assessment, things are designed based on flavour and theme without considering the statistics. (The lack of value and tempo considerations/assessments in the design of KDM is a problem that has existed since the game came out and continues to this date).

Last of all there is the miniature itself, unfortunately Badar is clad in Silk Armor, which remains a very weak armor set (it's a Leather Armor tier armor set that you get when you're crafting stuff like Lantern Armor, whoops), you will always be able to make a Silk Armor set alongside the Toxicimitar and Badar's status as a male survivor matters because they can get Harvestman more easily. So there is a world where this miniature sees tabletop play with perfect What You See Is What You Get (where the miniature is an exact gear match for the survivor it represents). He's pretty cool looking, but not as useful as Willow or Erza/Sun Lion are.

Overall I'd be giving this one an A for the concepts involved, but a C- for the final result, there's a lot of potential here and the rating could go up if Spidicules gets the love that she deserves in Campaigns of Death, but here – most of the time, you're going to craft this from a L3 White Lion or Antelope or Gorm instead through the second crafting option, and that, while it is useful for players and powerful for settlements, it doesn't help promote and improve the situation that Spider-Mommy is in.

On the other hand, it's really great if you want a power boost for hunting generic L3 monsters because that generic crafting cost is so low.

Thanks to community members Charles and timberwolfl for the images of the promotional content so I could test it out earlier than just waiting for it to arrive in the post.