The Chorusseum: An Overview and First Impressions Review (Patreon)

As previously I will be peppering my campaign write up with mini-reviews and early thoughts on the various aspects of the Gambler's Chest, we're not into the point where I can write in detail about these things with the depth I would like, but I do think first impression style reviews are valuable because they are the closest someone as enfranchised as myself gets to a 'new player experience'.

In addition I am going to start giving a rating for the gear cards in this location, it is something I should have done with the Crockery (by the time you read this I'll have gone back and fixed that article); I'm going to rate things as the following:

• Broken – Gear that distorts the game in an unhealthy fashion (we don't want this)
• Staple – Something that one has to find reasons to not use because it is far stronger than other options of the same type (This can be unhealthy for the game)
• Good – A Piece of Gear that always contributes to a survivor/hunt party
• Situational – Gear that can be strong in the right  builds/circumstances
• Bad – Gear that is best left in the box and needs adjustment by Team Death

Ideally most gear will land in either Good or Situational with as few Staples as possible, because staples limit play space (see Rawhide & Leather vs. Node 1/2 monster armor sets in generation I)

That written, lets take a look at the potential rewards for killing the inflatable six armed singing shrimps.

Spoiler Warning: I will be diving into the Indomitable Resource & Pattern gear cards near the bottom of this post. You can skip past them to the summary heading if you want to be surprised about that aspect of this monster's rewards.

The Obligatory Noisy Keyword Bit

As always, it is important to understand and appreciate the risks involved in any negative keyword so you can properly compensate or protect against it where possible. Heavy, Fragile, Stinky, Soluble, Consumable and similar all have hidden areas where they can cause issues for hunting survivors. It is part of what makes constructing a hunt party so interesting.

However, nothing holds a candle to Noisy; which has an interaction with the dreaded 10 Random Hunt Event Result that is so brutal and negative, without any form of mitigation or counter play. That when you go on a hunt with noisy gear equipped you are literally gambling with the life of that survivor. This is caused by the interaction Noisy keyword gear causes an automatic death with no way to avoid it during hunt event 10:

“This event cannot be rerolled or avoided in any way.

The ground quakes and cracks beneath the survivors. A colossal worm bursts from below, its skin a mosaic of screaming faces. The mere sight of it is maddening .

All survivors gain 1 random disorder and must spend 1 survival or be devoured whole. If any survivor has noisy gear, the Harvester is drawn to the sound and they are instantly devoured. Nothing can save them.

The creature is so horrifying that the survivors' brains erase the experience from their memories. Do not gain the benefits of your death principle.”

Now there is a question about how certain new knowledges that modify the dice roll result interact with this particular hunt event, but until we see an update to the FAQ on the store I am not going to worry about that.

To whit, if you go on a hunt, a place where you risk running into the Harvester, you are risking arriving at the showdown with a survivor already dead no matter how much survival, armor points or other protections that survivor has. Due to the lack of any form of counterplay or mitigation outside of not rolling the harvester (or using house rules), one has to weigh these odds up before departing. It is true that the Bone Eaters, Arc Survivor, Scout, Lonely Tree and Promotional hunt event cards all help reduce the odds of running into the Harvester by making basic hunt events less common, but the risk of instant death is still there. Something to bear in mind with each of the noisy keyword instruments that we will encounter here. For reviewing purposes I am not going to score noisy against the gear during the review of this settlement location, but it is worth noting that the noisy gear cards here continue to have that risk on the hunt and conversely have no risk during Nemesis Showdowns or any other situation where basic hunt events are not involve. It is not Noisy gear's fault that the Harvester hunt event is unfortunate design that puts a chokehold on a portion of the game experience for players who seek a certain risk/reward threshold to be reasonable..

My main recommendation with having the Chorusseum as a part of your campaign without editing your basic hunt event rule book is to put as many additional non-basic hunt cards from your collection into the core hunt deck as possible. It's not pretty, but it works. So always include the Lonely Tree and Bone Eaters in your campaigns with the Pollution Prawns.

Ballads

Ballad [X]: A gear special rule. Spend [Activation] and archive X wounds from the monster's wound stack to perform a Ballad. Effects of Ballads last until the gear is archived. you die, or you perform a different Ballad. Ballads have different names and costs (denoted by [X).

The ballad is a mechanic that echoes the Hunting Horn from Monster Hunter in that it represents a survivor playing a musical tune during the showdown for some form of bonus that lasts until that survivor dies, the instrument being used is archived or another ballad is performed. I couldn't find clarification as to what happens with a Ballad being played by a survivor who leaves the board via mechanics like Crush & Devour/Puppeteering, I may have missed that, but I do hope a stalk puppet survivor still keeps playing their song as they dangle from the Spidicules spike lure.

This mechanic requires the monster to be wounded a certain amount, meaning that the more powerful Ballads will ask for more wounds to be inflicted. It also means that monsters who begin the showdown with cards in their wound pile (and there is one) allow for a very early activation of a Ballad. It also stops monsters with self healing/regeneration from accessing those AI cards because they have been archived. The downside of ballads is they don't do anything much against monsters with Life because they skip the normal process of archiving of wound cards. Monsters like the Lonely Tree and Final Nemesis monsters often operate in this fashion.

Ballads are an interesting and sweet new mechanic which I think is very well designed and fun, they lean hard into the Renaissance bard aesthetic that dominates this settlement location's gear and I am here for it, as long as the bard is not Jingly John, he's the worst.

Singing Armor

Total Crafting Costs: 1xgaseous belly, 1x delicate hand, 3x pink flesh, 1x bone, 2x organ, 1x hide

Singing Armor is very impressive set of armor that provides the first competitor to Leather Armor since Screaming Armor got nerfed with a beating from the “No Stick” and it is in my opinion exactly the level that Node 2 armor sets should be balanced at with 20 armor points, a few solid abilities and a good selection of affinities that have some flexibility in their placement.

The armor set bonus gives the wearing survivor the ability to run two ballads at the same time, it is not clear if you can simply activate the same ballad twice or not from the text on the card, however I have played it as requiring two different ballads because that made the most sense and also I prefer to mix two ballads together for interesting interactions rather than stacking the same one multiple times.

The individual abilities on this armor set vary from being really powerful to good in certain situations, with the Muffin Cap (sadly called the Singing Cap in game) giving us the best with its puzzle ability allowing one to ignore 1 hit when you've suffered more than 1 in a single attack. That is of course independent of other ways to ignore/cancel/avoid a hit and it makes the Ballad set an excellent front line option. It is also really thematic because the hats continuously put out smoke and it suggests the narrative that this smoke is interfering with the monster's ability to target the survivor.

The Gloves have a very simple discount to the cost of Ballads (making it more likely you can activate two at once) and the Singing Boots give you a disengage ability which is useful if you are using the Singing Armor for a more support focused build who seeks to keep away from the monster's reach. I can see this second playstyle becoming more prominent later in a campaign when monster offensive power becomes too high for the Singing Armor to work well on the front line.

Last of all we have our good old “Monster Armor Movement” ability; where the Singing Armor survivor rushes forwards with a full move and if they wound the monster and have moved at least 4 spaces they get to Encourage all survivors. This has interactions with any fighting arts/Encourage based synergy gear. I think this is probably the weakest of the Singing Armor's abilities but it still has power in some situations and I always appreciate stuff that is situationally powerful rather than just generically good.

Singing Armor is an amazing set and will be a staple in any campaign where the Smog Singers feature. It is so good that in my blind run of the GCE campaign I would have crafted a second set over a leather set if my drops had been a bit more fortunate.

Rating: Staple

Hamfluter

1x whistle tooth, 1xone

This club has such a solid pair of abilities that I can forgive the slightly low strength for a Node 2 (Node 2 should start at 4 strength) and the rest of its attack profile is on the nose average. The Ballad of Perfection has some exciting synergies for supporting Perfect Hit builds and that ability remains relevant all campaign. The affinity ability is the Manhunter Fighting Art Abyssal Sadist on a literal stick and that is nothing short of a real powerhouse, this attack trigger helps protect your brain and keeps you able to use survival actions all showdown.

Good ballad, amazing ability, decent starts and a low crafting cost all combine to make an exceptional piece of gear. Also thanks to being a club this weapon can scale into the late game with the assistance of Lantern Armor.

Rating: Staple

Energy Drum

1x gaseous belly, vocal chords

Part of a suite of “Support Survivor” gear cards, the concept behind this one is allowing a survivor to contribute to offence via giving their activation to another survivor. There is already an existing archetype of “Pure Support” survivor and it is very interesting to see Team Death engage with this archetype directly in such an overt fashion.

However, the cost to use this is pretty steep with that survival, and support survivors usually have better things to employ their survival for. So it is still a large question mark how well this will work out over multiple full length campaign with different options, People of the Sun for example don't get Surge, so that's an area where this might turn out to be more powerful. As such I'm not going to put this one in “Good” at the moment, but it has potential to get there with time and it will of course get stronger the more new support archetype gear cards enter the pool.

Rating: Situational; but I'm keeping an eye on this one

Peace Dagger

1x fluted bone, 1x tail fat, 1x hide

Another “Support Survivor” card, this one gives your survivor a pseudo-Tinker ability (that stacks with Tinker) as long as the holding survivor does not attack; there's a couple of places where this can be achieved, the first is the aforementioned archtype, but also Scouts without a Grimjaw/Reaperjaw are prime candidates to hold one of these as they can clean up terrain, activate this at some point during all the mayhem and then hide in a corner for the rest of the showdown. This makes it a very helpful way of keeping a good flow of Endeavors into the settlement, something that Cannibalize settlements greatly benefit from. It is also worth noting that Dagger Mastery isn't technically an attack, however you'd probably need a second dagger with good strength to be able to benefit from that.

The thing that tips this from situational to good for me is the affinities, this is a wonderful selection of affinities, especially those blue and green affinities. It's overall an interesting item and it has broad applications.

Rating: Good

Harpy Harp

1x singing tongue, 1x white tooth, 1x scrap

Talk about a pushed piece of gear, the Harpy Harp seems to be shoved as hard as possible and designed as the gear card that all the other noisy and instrument keyword cards were designed around. Not only do we get Overwhelming Darkness immunity, but we also get a turbo Monster Tooth Necklace when the puzzle affinity is lined up.

The thing is, while this item is clear in its power, it's almost harmful to the design of multiple other things in this crafting location. I am not going to place it in the Broken tier, but it is almost going into the Unhealthy one because of how it seems to have impacted upon the strength of multiple other noisy/instrument weapons by a point of strength. I might end up revising my rating on this one over time but for now it's getting a positive rating.

Rating: Good

Pipa

1x fluted severed head, 1x pink flesh, 1x organ

A Pipa is a traditional Chinese instrument also known as the “Chinese Lute” and I've played one of these; the sound on them is delightful and distinctive. You know this as it is the “King of Chinese Instruments” and a staple in Chinese sound tracks. Now you know that you can put on the Kung Fu Hustle soundtrack when you take this to a showdown, you're welcome.

The Ballad on this one isn't top tier in power for ballads, but it is a generic benefit that you'll activate if there are not other options. Unfortunately for all of us however outside of the affinities there's not much to get excited about. This is because the extra strength unlock via puzzle affinity applies to the Pipa only (because you need to activate the Pipa to get the bonus). That unfortunately means we have a weapon here with weak stats and no Deadly to combo with with the Savage directly. You may use this one for the affinities in some builds, for archiving AI/Wounds against specific monsters who use their wound pile for benefits and to support Vespertine Cello luck parties but that's the very definition of a situational card.

Rating: Situational

Singing Heart

1x singing tongue, 1x bone, 1x scrap

For a short while this one was a bit of a head scratcher, the ability is so patently terrible due to you losing something permanently in exchange for a temporary effect on the monster. That's the same problem many bombs in this game have, however sitting above that are a couple of reasons why you would use this item in your gear grid. ~First of all it's a lantern and that matters in the core game campaign. It is also an instrument, and one that gives a weapon noisy and +1 accuracy. This means you can use this in combination with the Harpy Heart and have any weapon benefit from it. They're even both instruments themselves so that's a base +2 strength before we even get into stacking more instruments on the whole grid.

The thing is, this lantern needs to be in a specific location adjacent to the weapon in question and it only affects a single weapon to boot. As such it is very hard to get this lantern to work well due to the number of weapons that want a specific affinity sitting on the right of them. It's a surprising amount, so add that on top of this item not contributing any affinities of its own and there are only a few specific spots where I'd consider using this lantern, such as the Drum of Hope.

Rating: Situational

Razor Cymbals

1x delicate hand, 1x scrap

Hey look, it's our obligatory Node 2 Katars! The Razor Cymbals are no slouch with a solid set of affinities (that it doesn't need itself) and a decent attack profile for such a cheap weapon. They manage to move ahead of the directly comparable Beast Knuckle because of the Instrument/Noisy synergy even though their ability is weaker. As such I am more interested in these when compared to their antelope counterpart even though toughness reduction is generally a stronger ability than evasion reduction for higher speed weapon types such as Paired.

The Evasion Reduction can also be used to help other survivors score hits by letting them attack by surging during survival windows, which is a similar application that the Beast Knuckle has. (Also for the record since the GCE I've revised my opinion of the Beast Knuckle to being Situational rather than bad because now we have potential worlds where there is no Lion Beast Katar dominating the Katar early game).

Rating: Good

Spinning Sword

1x fluted bone, 1x bone

Note: No Noisy here

This Paired weapon however is a bit less of a hit because while it has good affinities and an interesting ability it is held back by a weak attack profile. Put this one at 4 strength and I would put this in the good rating category. As it stands however, this weapon is either bad or amazing depending on the monster you are fighting, most monsters do not make Ranged attacks, but a few do and the more ranged attacks the monster makes the better these swords become as a defensive tool. The Tyrant for example is mostly attacking by range attacks and moods; however within the GCE we have precious few Range attacks across all the monsters.

So most of the time I don't think you're going to want to use these swords because their attack profile is weak; instead you should remember they exist as a tool to handle range attacking monsters as and when they come out. The very definition of a situational gear card.

I would also like to note that I think the way that the defensive +2 evasion ability is worded on this card is excellent, as it allows additional spinning swords to contribute to ranged attack defenses.

Rating: Situational

Spear of Life

1x fluted bone, 1x whistle tooth, 1x hide

Note: No Noisy here

This is a weapon that is frankly almost perfection in its design; it has exactly the kind of attack profile I expect to see from a Node 2 Level 1 monster. On top of that it provides the perfect example  of how to provide a situational ability correctly. This weapon can save a survivor who is about to die from bleeding and while that survivor will suffer a permanent evasion reduction that is a fair trade because the survivor was going to die anyway.

It's especially great because it supports the self-bleed focus that Crimson Crocodile armor is focused on and I always appreciate cross-monster/expansion synergies as they are fun to discover and explore.

Rating: Staple

Indomitable Gear

Indomitable gear is gained through specific indomitable resources which are usually gained from killing L3+ versions of the monsters, as such they should be considered as mid to late campaign weapons and that's what I am judging their power level around. We're looking for things that can handle 15+ toughness monsters (if they are weapons) with some assistance in order to let them function at least up to lantern year 20 and have a chance against the base toughness of the first campaign nemesis monster and be potentially functional against Node 3 L2/L3 monsters, that strength value starts at around 8 or 9 but it is flexible depending on what else the weapon is doing.

Curse Hammer

1x Fused Feet, 1x Bone, 2x Organ

This is a very unique weapon in that it starts with a higher strength than you would expect for a Node 2 indomitable weapon however it gets weaker with every wound. Eventually when the weapon has accumulated a lot of -strength you will trigger the ballad, flip all your negative tokens and then go again, potentially even triggering it a second time if the monster has a lot of health.

However, this weapon is so wound card intensive that it excludes the inclusion of most other ballad weapons at the same time and on top of that it is a purely selfish ballad that only flips the user's negative tokens. Due to these limitations and the way this weapon excludes other ballads considered this one to almost be Situational, with that situation being how it excludes other instrument weapon Ballads and there are some very good Ballads on them. However if you were ever going to pick just one Ballad, there are worse options.

I do need more time with this weapon to fully explore it, it's very unusual and impresses me a lot, but it is awkward to use and I have to figure out if that awkwardness is worth dealing with in exchange for the raw power.

Rating: Good

Discordian

1x Foreskin Hood, 1x Hide, 2x Bone

That combination of 3 strength and Sharp puts the Discordian in the right spot for attacking with it in spite of the Unwieldy negatrait (Unwieldy is fine as it doesn't scale up in damage). The real gem here however is that Ballad of Swordpolka which gives every sword in the gear grid Deflect 1 or +1 Deflect. That's a very powerful option on a solid weapon, but you do need to run a lot of swords in order to squeeze all the value from this.

Even in isolation this is good enough at enhancing the Discordian to make it generically useful, but it turns out that there are a lot of really good swords out there. We even got more of them in the Gambler's Chest itself, and some of those are even Sword + second weapon type. This means there doesn't just to have to be a pile of Swordudes in the showdown, are spaces where one can have variety in weapon options and still get the sword benefit.

Rating: Good

Drum of Hope

1x Belly Steel, 1x Bone, 1x Perfect Resource

This is a very powerful weapon with good typing and lots of affinities in addition to a strong Ballad that asks the survivor who activates it to be very accurate with their weapon. Due to its slow and 6+ base accuracy this axe/club is very much a blind spot attacking weapon. However, once active, if you can maintain it, turning all Reflex Wound reactions into Failure ones is a huge boon for a showdown party. Add onto that three red affinities and no requirement to have some yourself and I think this is a great weapon, we're going to see a lot of attack, hit, trigger “Ballad of Smash” for the first survivor's act during their round followed by multiple surge activations during the round and the next one in order to neuter monsters with dangerous wound reactions.

There's also a less bursty playstyle where one seeks to keep swinging by passing those accuracy roles to keep it going. +Accuracy gear is your friend here, Lantern Armor does a lot of work on that front.

Rating: Staple

Saxe

1x Crystallized Song, 2x Bone, 1x Organ

This weapon has a good weapon type and decent strength, its Ballad of Blues is something that's really situational, but you should not ignore it when facing monsters who are heavily into Moods. Archiving a Mood in play is essentially dealing/confirming/securing a wound on a monster and it can turn dire situations into manageable ones with a single activation. However, when dealing with monsters who do not use moods much, have non-threatening ones, or tend to only keep one mood in play at a time then this Ballad looks less appetising.

I can see the Tyrant really being into the Blues; but Spidicules our resident spooder mom, despite her heavy Mood focus, is barely going to skip a beat. This, like many things in this settlement location's crafting list, is very much the definition of a situational gear card. It is really powerful in those specific situations and it has somewhat solid stats for an Axe.

Rating: Situational

Pattern Gear

Hushing Harmonium

1x Singing Tongue, 1x Broken Lantern, 1x Vocal Chords

Requires: Drums, a survivor who fought the Smog Singers and inflicts Deaf on that survivor.

You're not crafting this one for the attack profile, so the lack of weapon proficiency on this is meaningless, instead this is a tool to use against specific monsters who use sound as a part of their attacks. It still has more general usage as it can also mess with monsters who are heavily threat focused (Butcher anyone?)  It is important to internalise what Hushed does though; because it means you cannot encourage, roar, scream, activate noisy gear or do anything that requires sound in exchange for ignoring vibration damage and being deaf.

I will always craft this weapon if I get the opportunity, but I won't be taking it out on every hunt, this is for specific purposes.

Rating: Situational

Summary

Singing Armor is nothing short of spectacular and it is a huge argument for fighting the Smog Singers all by itself and it is good without even getting into its ballad specific interactions. It is good enough that it threatens to know Leather off its perch as the ruler of the early-mid game portion of the campaign. For the rest of the gear cards, while the Harvester casts a very long, deep shadow over most of the other gear, there are still a lot of fun and fresh designs (especially for sane people who house rule). Ballads are a sweet addition to the game's mechanics and there are numerous standout weapons here.

While the non-armor gear overall is not as exciting or overall strong as the Crimson Crocodile's options, there is still good variety and some genuine smash hits inside this album. Personal highlights for myself include the Singing Armor, the Spear of Life and Hamfluter; but also things like the Peace Dagger and Energy Drum show that Team Death are looking to explore and expand on the strategic & tactical options survivors have during the showdown.

Add onto that some of the best thematic designs we've seen for any gear (especially the armor) and this collection of gear offers a lot of playful fun. It's a real delight to see a Renaissance themed selection of options for Bards and Jingly Johns alike.