A Visual Guide to the Screaming Antelope (1.6 Edition) (Patreon)

As a supplement what follows is an overview of the decisions made behind the visual guide components included. I've not added a visual guide to the showdown fight against the Screaming Antelope here because I will probably do a visual guide based around farming it for as many resources as possible in the future; in fact I might just do a generic 'farming monsters for resources guide' instead. Anyway, enough with the footnote, onto the contents.

No monster package in the world of Kingdom Death: Monster has suffered as many changes as the Screaming Antelope. From 1st Edition's Insanity based armor, past the “beta” version that was used by some players before 1.5 arrived, through the over tuned and powerful 1.5 version all the way to the 1.6 version which revised not only the armor set but also reshuffled what gear comes from the crafting location. Consolidating the Screaming Antelope specific stuff into the Stone Circle and peeling the generic stuff into the Barber Surgeon was a great move for the game's health when combined with decoupling the Barber Surgeon unlock away from the Antelope showdown. It not only made 1.6 more generic and portable to other campaign settings without having residue from the Antelope (Lion and Phoenix) gumming up space on the cards; it also helped replacement monsters like Spidicules fit into the game without punishing players for choosing them by locking off key healing endeavors.

In short; it's been a bumpy road and the place we're at feels like where APG wants to make a final stop on the road; even though the place is a run down motel where things don't work right and are broken. But I'm not here to review the Antelope's shortcomings today, so we won't dwell on that any more and instead take a look at what can be done with the new evolution of the Stone Circle and its gear.

The largest mechanical changes are the updates to the armor set and the consolidating of all the Antelope specific gear cards onto the Stone Circle. This means that we know what some of the best elements of the Antelope are, because they have not changed. The Antelope offers Blood Paint; which is a build defining item due to how it allows “Sword & Board” builds to operate with a steady bruiser playstyle (high defences, decent damage, frontline off tanking). This gear card remains one of my top favourite things in the entire game, I love it when a well designed single card can create a new playstyle and Blood Paint is the flagship for that.

Also the amazing endeavor “Harvest Ritual” remained, and while it was not changed directly; updates to the Basic Resource deck which now provides Perfect resources has made that endeavor more powerful because it provides additional chances to gain Perfects by recycling excess monster resources into basic ones. With enough monster resources to hand you can even guarantee the draw. This coupled with how readily the Screaming Antelope drops bits keeps the antelope in its position as a premium farming monster a category populated mainly by itself, the White Lion and the Flower Knight.

Most of the other gear cards are either outclassed by other options or one ofs. I'll briefly walk through each of them to explain where they land.

Boss Mehndi

The lack of affinities and the missing symbol keyword (for Lion God synergies) makes this item need a really strong ability to justify it. It doesn't have that, so there is little reason to build this item. We can just leave it in the box.

Beast Knuckle

The lack of Deadly on this weapon means that most builds are going to skip past it and look for other Katars. In the core game one you might use these to hold the fort in the mid campaign until you get access to the late game Oxidized Beast Katars, but once you add in expansions these weapons fall off very hard in comparison to other options.

Brain Mint

Good affinities, unique ability. You will certainly want to construct one of these if you have the correct resource and I can see arguments for a second one if you're swimming in brains. The thing that limits getting this is the number of slots that each survivor has, if we played with 12 or 15 slots then we could justify more edge case cards like Brain Mint.

Bone Earrings

Very situational, mostly for Crystal Skin survivors or People of the Skull Campaigns. You have to have a specific build in mind for this, the extra strength is good, but until we get full bone armor options it'll be rare that you want to craft this.

Speed Powder

Not good enough for how hard it is to get. Not only do you need to have a survivor get devoured, but they need to survive it and roll well enough to acquire the heart. This one does have an affinity, which puts it in a better place than the Earrings/Mehndi, but I generally only use this for showdowns where too much insanity might be a lethal concern (and even then, the Slender Man has a better option).

Elder Earrings

Great affinities and an ability that is very useful when you want to push a survivor from 0 hunt XP to 2 in a single showdown, speeding up their gaining of weapon proficiency. However once you have Saga innovated there are less benefits to this item. So it is typically a one per settlement craft.

Lance of Longinus

Irreplacable, no Sharp, no affinities. Those options keep this weapon away from being a viable option, it does have very strong ability, but the lantern glaive occupies the same space as the Lance and is a better option for everyone except for Cycloid Scale armored survivors and they have access to a better spear in their crafting location. I do not see the justification for an irreplaceable,

Screaming Armor

That brings us to the Gorm in the room. Screaming Armor. As written at the head of this article, Screaming Armor has had a real long, bumpy ride, and its current form has taken a lot of nerfs. What we're left with is an armor set with low armor points for its cost; spear synergies and a few decent utility abilities.

It's taken a fair bit of time working with the armor in order to try and understand where it now fits in the game's framework, but the position I've landed on is a hybrid support/trapper spear using build. With the aid of a leather shield the armor set is good enough to hold against the level 1 versions of node 3 monsters (Phoenix, Dung Beetle Knight, Dragon King, Sunstalker), but it is going to be discarded in favour of other tougher options as the campaign's years grow longer. You can no longer bolt this on and wear it all campaign; and that's a good thing for the game's play space.

What you'll do with this armor set now is utilise the helmet's Insanity gains as a form of healing for survivor brains, collect all the terrain that requires dice rolls and then hang around near the monster poking it with the spear occasionally. Then when the trap card is due to be drawn (discovered via scouting), this survivor will use their spear to poke it and disarm it (hence the “trapper” archtype) creating a “free” reshuffle and resetting all the juicy hit locations back into the deck. With the addition of a leather shield for additional hit points this survivor can even step in and block damage when the main tank needs a bit of space.

It is of course not ideal; the largest issue remains the poor return on investment that you get for resources → armor points. But this is consistently a large problem with the early game armour sets, they all are inferior choices when compared to Rawhide and Leather Armor. Plus the Rawhide Helm is the only source of decent, repeated AI control in the game. If we had an item or accessory version of the Rawhide Headband then I think Screaming Armor would replace Rawhide Armor as the support armor set of choice – which would also be a good move for the game's health.

Final Words

The people I feel most for with these changes are the Core Game only players; there is already a very limited progression with precious few options for late game armor. Phoenix, Lantern and that's your lot – other people will have to use Leather + Shields or maybe a Rawhide Support. It's a rough place to be in, but the game has always suffered because of its armor design, so that's no change from normal.

I think that Screaming Armor is almost in the right place, but really a full set should be giving 4 armor points to all locations, this the same as the change White Lion armor requires because without this kind of value both armor sets are overall worse options than Rawhide or Leather. While Screaming Armor's spear synergy and affinities are better than the White Lion Armor's Dagger/Katar synergy and affinities they are not competing with each other, they're competing with the generic armors and losing out. This failure to compare to the generic options (which balance wise should be weaker than monster specific ones) is a consistent issue across all early game armor we've seen to date except for Silk Armor (which has a different, but still huge issue).

This means on the whole the Screaming Antelope occupies the same design and campaign space as the White Lion; there are a few key items you'll grind it for and then after that it becomes a monster you farm for lots of resources to use elsewhere. Access to Acanthus does make it a bit more unique than the White Lion as there are always good uses for Dried Acanthus and having a pool of generic resources; but it is not a good spot for the core game experience and that is why I firmly say that a Kingdom Death campaign needs five quarries at a minimum. Three early game ones that can be also hunted at higher levels later on in the campaign and two mid game ones; I personally settled on Gorm/White Lion/Screaming Antelope/Dragon King/Sunstalker as my preferred main choices, but the Dung Beetle Knight is a very acceptable alternative and the Phoenix and Spidicules are fine options if you want to increase the difficulty of the campaign a few notches.