People of the Dream Keeper: Part 4 – Hand Off (Patreon)

Spoilers for:

• Atnas – Level 1
• Story Event: The Game
• Crimson Crocodile – Level 3
• Smog Singers - Level 3
• The Hand – Level 1
• Collective Cognition unlocks – 16, 21 & 26
• Scout/Outskirts

Lantern Years covered – 9 to 13

Philosophies in settlement – Impermanism, Lanternism, Faceism, Dreamism, Survivalism, Collectivism, Deadism and Regalism.

The goals for this portion of Termina's existence were to face down Atnas, advance Knowledge, Philosophy and Collective Cognition gains. As such our primary protagonists for this portion would be chosen from the following survivors (some of whom join partway through this period):

• Prismatic – Club Proficiency, Survivalism
• Hunger – Shield Proficiency, Impermanism
• Syr Vival – Bow Proficiency, Survivalism
• Treasure – Fist & Tooth Proficiency, Dreamism
• Beefe – Dagger Proficiency, Faceism
• Dart – Dagger Proficiency, Regalism
• Ballard – Axe Proficiency, Survivalism
• Jigsaw, Sword Proficiency, Impermanism & a pet Sharp Bone Sword

Prismatic, our Birth Settlement Event Survivor with +1 Speed, +1 Evasion. +1 Luck and 1 of each colour affinity who wields the Dome Buster was our primary carry here. Hunger was our longest standing survivor, working away slowly at Shield Proficiency with the aid of the Blood Compass Lantern that could allow him to switch out Super-Dense locations if the wrong weapon lined up. Beefe and Dart were our two designated Scouts (hence Dagger Proficiency). Hunger and Treasure are our two most important survivors with their Fist and Shield proficiencies being core things that the settlement wants to complete.

Crafting objectives were a bit looser at this point, with only the Scout Lantern, interesting Pattern Cards and a Phoenix Armor set the main goals. The Seed Pattern deck had proven to be spitting out a lot of duds/situational offerings such as the Hushing Harmonicon or obsolete power level options like the Fingernail Whip which I would have loved to use, but missed the window on.

Because Phoenix Armor was now on the menu, Iron was also something that needed to be collected, so two Pickaxes were crafted to sit alongside the Scavenger Kit. We also had ReaperJaw amongst the pile of patterns and switching up to that weapon for our Dagger Scouts sounded like a good call. Not sure I'd ever want to run Reaper and Grim in the same Scout gear grid however. Before that though, it was time to Face Atnas, and we took out the A-Team for this one.

Lantern Year - 9: Level 1 Atnas

I'd like to really get into the details for Atnas, but the simple truth is I activated the Ballad of Savagery from the Pipa to remove all the moods and Atnas got to rush to the bottom of the board, the bottom right corner and then the bottom left corner before Dome Buster plus a couple of critical wounds sent him packing. We didn't get to see any Sword Craft cards kick off, no trap, just indicators that Atnas could disable Surge on survivors (which is neat and scary). It was the shortest Node 2 Nemesis monster fight I've experienced and while I'm confident that Dome Buster + Prismatic was responsible for a lot of that, it still caught me off guard with how fast it was over. Hopefully next time, a rematch that will likely not include Prismatic (due to aging if nothing else) is something I'm looking forward to, which is a pattern I'm starting to find with my experiences in the GCE content. Level 1 is interesting, but not super challenging and everything starts to come into focus when we reach the L2+ versions. I kind of miss the way that monsters like the Gorm would recontextualize the monster's stages in its life cycle, but it is a good way of teaching players to handle new monsters. In combination with the Collective Cognition, we're lead to moving at harder monsters in a well done manner.

Lantern Year - 10: Level 1 Phoenix

With this stomp, it was clear that the settlement needed to progress onto harder monsters, but first of all I wanted to get that Level 1 Phoenix squared away in order to warm up against its special type of nonsense (and hopefully get an Arc Bow/Heart Bow). Also the Nightmare Tree in the Phoenix Showdown gave us the chance to get that third Broken Lantern. The Phoenix remained as huge a pile of nonsense as always, despite trying to keep into the cardinal compass positions for attacking this first Phoenix flipped up the new(ish) Eon Heart card from Death Crown Aya on the first turn. I was grateful that the Legendary tier card wasn't Deja Vu, but this still ramped the monster's toughness up enough that it was troublesome for anyone who wasn't Prismatic.

So the showdown essentially boiled down to Prismatic and the Dome Buster vs. the Eon Heart Phoenix while everyone else got pushed around the place by the usual knockback shennanigans (I could have kept in Cardinal positions, but it wasn't super worth it when most of the group's weapons were struggling to overcome those extra toughness tokens). The big loss was our Axe/Blood Dancer survivor Cring Kimson (from back against the LY3 Butcher and the main other source of damage) became collateral during this, he got hit with a bunch of Age tokens before Spiral Age vanished him from existence. Whee, bye bye Blood Dancer II, you looked cool (and also just far too easy to level up), but I guess we'll have to wait to draw it again.

Even with the extra toughness and luck, this tough young bird succumbed to having its cranium crushed by the finger mallet and we got a bunch of feathers, plus the Wishbone and the pattern for the Heart Bow & Arrows. But as there was no Whiskers, neither Bow was on the table. We'll have to return to the L2 versions after the Hand, because right now I wanted to see more Indomitable Weapons from the Crunk and Lyrical Lobsters.

Lantern Year 11: Level 3 Crimson Crocodile

The Crimson Crocodile was first on the list as I could be sure we would be getting non-noisy pieces of gear. One of the first steps was to leave our newly gained Deadism survivor back in the settlement; because having someone permanently terrified seemed like not the best course of action. So the team was the usual group of Prismatic, Hunger, Syr, Ballad and big old Beefe as the Scout. This was a super exciting showdown and one of the highlights of the campaign to date. That first hit of the trap is peak Kingdom Death, and I love how it forced the showdown into overdrive, because while the hidden Scout with her Scout Lantern would definitely survive (due to the Crimson Crocodile dying to its own mechanics eventually) there was still four valuable survivors with lives in the balance, kiting the Croc around wasn't really an option here so it was instead Surge time. Because a 2 speed Dome Buster is stupidly busted beyond belief (able to deal up to 4 wounds per attack) things got dicey but ultimately managable and the victory was secured along with a lot of resources and the Diffuser Heart Indomitable Resource. Immortal Arm baybee, so excited about this one.

Returning from the showdown however was a horrible moment; the Settlement Event deck threw the new Murder at us and our Fist & Tooth survivor was right in the crosshairs. This felt doubly galling because on top of everything else, we'd just acquired the Immortal Arm for Treasure. That was when I remembered the Phoenix had given us a really sweet gift, in specific the tree had allowed the crafting of the Scout Lantern. Murder became Lights in the Sky and if I had some fireworks available I would have set those off in celebration. That was such an emotional roller-coaster to go through, I was already having to navigate the tricky situation of a survivor who was looking like she'd retire before finishing F&T, having her murdered would have got me stopping playing for at least a week. I tell you, this game, sometimes. Sheesh.

Lantern Year 12 - Level 3 Smog Singers

The last showdown before The Hand would be the Level 3 Smog Singers, this would be the test where we'd see if the mechanics of the Smog Singers work together well enough to be a serious threat or not. We'd also get to fist the prawns with the shiny, new, well lubricated, Immortal Arm. Fun!

Now despite having being just saved by the Scout Lantern; I didn't bring it on this hunt because there's an event that punishes a group with heavy gear by destroying Fragile stuff and the Smog Singers themselves destroy fragile gear. While it's relatively easy to keep the Scout safe from being attacked due to the nature of the Singers “aggression”; I didn't want to risk it until we had enough spare broken lanterns to immediately craft a new one. This caution paid off because we did indeed encounter the Breached Mudwhale on the way in.

Speaking of which, the new L3 Smog Singers did not hold up even with the threat of that pasty white fish on one of their trait cards. I had expected that the additional durability plus some more threatening cards would make a difference, but against the line up of Immortal Arm, Dome Buster and Crimson Bow the Singers just fell flat, deflated if you will. So the only thing of note here apart from the showdown being less challenging than the Crimson Crocodile one is that the indomitable weapon dropped was the Saxe. Not terrible, but not something I'm super concerned about given the way that we already have mood nemesis monsters mostly dunked on, maybe it'll be helpful against the L2 Butcher.

As an aside, because I gained the pattern card for it during this period I appreciate that the Hushing Harmonium does not have noisythat's the kind of mechanical thematics I go looking for and it's great to see. In addition I was also rewarded by keeping the normal Pattern deck in the game here because the Grim Muffler is something that I was thrilled to see because this meant I could use the Saxe out on hunts in order to get a proper read on how well it works on hunts without having to deal with it getting the Arrakis experience. Have I mentioned how essential I find the Grim Muffler from Winter Solstice Lucy? It's one of the best single cards for unlocking an entire aspect of the full KDM play experience. Even thought it is expensive because it comes with a Painters Scale miniature I still think it is a must purchase for all KDM players (one of only a few white boxes I rank that highly, another one is the Ringtail Vixen).

Lantern Year 13 - Level 1 Hand Nemesis

All that's left here is the Hand, which came with a new card linked to the story progression, however as I chose to take four newbies along with Treasure and intended to just sit tight on the usual play defense, earn applause route, it didn't trigger. I'm sure there's some cool pay off moment for triggering this, probably involving the final nemesis battle, but this time I'm not really bothered about stuff like that, I wanted to just get through the Hand and start back on the L2 Phoenixes,

There's other bits and pieces that happened, but they were mainly non-events like The Game story event, which builds on the narrative and even gave a new Knowledge to a survivor, but it is hard to get excited about some Knowledge that won't trigger until probably after lantern year 20. The big exciting moments were getting Song of the Brave in LY12, something that we sorely need to help with hunting post overwhelming Darkness monsters.

Goals for the settlement at this point are:

• Complete Fist & Tooth
• Gain a Phoenix Whisker
• Unlock and try out more Crimson Crocodile & Smog Singer Indomitable Gear
• Construct Phoenix Armor
• Construct Lantern Armor
• Continue to build on Cognitive Cognition points by always going for the next CC gain monster option.
• Develop Deadism wherever possible (it's going to be scary running Deadism vs. the Phoenix, but a good Spiral ageing self infliction might work out here)

Summary/Thoughts

There are a few nitpicks I have and some mild issues that are showing at this point of the campaign, they are nothing major with two exceptions. The number of Status cards provided for survivors is one short for a group plus Scout, this feels like something that should have been easily caught in testing and only required a handful of extra cards printed to fix.

Second; the lack of Indomitable resources/Patterns for the White Lion and Screaming Antelope is pretty inexcusable when we got them for the Phoenix and we got Scout Discoveries plus Patterns for the first two base game monsters. Even if they turn up in Campaigns of Death that's not a very good situation for new players looking to expand on their base game experience. I do not envy people who have to purchase both the Gambler's Chest and Campaigns of Death in order to get all the major releases that update their base set monsters.

These kind of things are not deal breakers, but they do demonstrate a continued lack of attention to detail and consideration for the customers. It's a similar problem to when the store puts up game content and then hides it from the potential buyer. That's just anti-consumer and it really needs to be pushed back against by us as a whole. It's also a good sign when my main complaints land in the regions of this rather than major flaws with specific in game design.

Atnas seems fun and interesting, but also a lot softer than either of the monsters it is replacing (at level 1), which I am of the opinion is fine, not everything needs to be a super challenge. If you want a hard, rewarding fight with gear you pick Slender Man, if you want goofy help with population you pick Atnas and if you hate yourself and love bookkeeping, you pick the King's Man.

Both of the two new quarry monsters in the Gambler's Chest are absolute slam dunks of the highest order, I have more fights against the Level 3 versions once we are past the Hand, and I always have a good time with them both. The Indomitable Resources/Pattern system also continues to impress, it's really cool to get these cards and the resource crafting cost on the gear is always well costed so you can get to use your shiny new toy very quickly if you want to. Seed Patterns on the other hand? With them being unlocked via Insight and also the inconsistency between the previous pattern cards and these ones, we've got a bit of a mess on our hands.

As exciting as the Pattern System is in theory, the way it spits out gear in a randomized order instead of in a progressively increasing power level to match the settlement's gear feels off. Though you can just population spam to draw the entire deck once you have Graves plus Saga.

Scout continues to be a feast or famine system, while I REALLY appreciate the Scout Lantern, it's clear that Scouts make the game easier when you're doing well and a lot harder when you're doing badly. I think that encourages a conservative play style that I do not find as engaging as pushing yourself and taking risks. I think I'll take time to test and break apart the entire Outskirts settlement location and scout system for an initial impressions review over the next two weeks along with recording the next few videos. Upcoming is the Flower Knight Sense Memory, then Spidicules' Silk Mill and after that is the Manhunter and Slenderman gear (not sure on the order for those last three at this time).

To return to areas where roughness could be smoothed further; I feel having an intergrated system for Patterns that would delay late game monster based patterns from turning up too early and also letting players archive unwanted patterns in exchange for new draws from the deck. I would also like to see the Insight draw removed, it's too prone to drawing out the entire deck (Graves + Saga) which creates this mess of noise and stuff that often gets forgotten about. I love the Pattern system in principle, as it can at times create an exciting new goal for the players. But I've had to devise an entire organisational system to keep these things in mind because of how much more time they take to craft when compared to the Indomitable versions. I'll probably write about it once I get it smooth enough.