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Revisiting Constructing a Kingdom Death: Monster Campaign: Part 3 The Small Content Expansions
🕑 Added 2023-05-05 09:00:03 +0000 UTC
Here we will comb through the final category of content; the small/white/beta/seasonal/misc boxes that contain gameplay content with in game integration rules. There are a lot of different kinds of shop purchased content and while they come in a wide range of styles they all have one thing in common. They offer a small amount of gameplay content plus some miniatures, which means they are always less monetary value than the main expansions because you are paying for miniatures that may not even have a in in game use. They are also generally limited release; in that if you do not purchase them when they are in the shop you might end up not being able to buy them direct from Adam Poots Games Limited (APG) and instead have to go pay the eye watering prices demanded on the secondary market. The main way you can tell if something may come back into print is by the material the miniatures are presented in; plastic sprue miniatures historically tend to come back into print, especially if they are seasonal content. But it is still not a guarantee; APG work on a combination of concealing how good the game content well be alongside stoking people's “collector drives” (the desire to have a 'complete collection') and Fear of Missing Out (FOMO).
This is, of course, not a great place for use to be in. I cannot give you an honest and timely opinion on how good the content is until after it has been in the store; been purchased, delivered to a member of this community and they pass on the information to me so I can proxy the cards and try them out in advance of my own order arriving. Without Timberwolfl and Charles' assistance in all this process I would be only able to review the stuff over a month after it entered the online shop. I really wish it could be different, but all evidence points to the fact that Adam's so secretive about his content that he could not give up that level of control over the information surrounding his releases before they are in the hands of customers.
In short; all this content in this section of the series is fleeting and you may not have it. I always advocate purchasing the content directly from the company if you have the opportunity; however that may not always be possible. In those cases you will have to decide if you are willing to pay secondary market prices, proxy the content or live without it. I wish things could be different; I wish we would see a '2023 Collected Game Content' edition each year that packaged all of the limited time cards together, but that seems like a pipedream.
When reviewing this portion of the content for its inclusion in campaigns, I am going to list any potential synergies,
Small Box and Shop Content
The Strains
Campaign Essentiality: Auto Include
Expansion Synergies: Varies depending on the patterns/strains.
Expansion Clashes: None
Difficulty Modifier: More options, which can make the campaign easier.
This is a blanket entry for all strains released to date; just use it all. Include them according to the rules in the box. They are both a silly pair of systems that have been grafted onto the game's mechanics because of the popularity that Gloom/Frosthaven has. However, they do have some fun things, so one can overlook their conception.
The Strains tend to offer more value than the Patterns over multiple campaigns, so if you're picking just one system for the game and you plan to play the game's campaigns many times Strains are better. However if you play infrequently and have a single campaign that is gradually unfolding over months or even years – Patterns are better overall because of how easily they can be bolted into an existing campaign more seamlessly.
I will briefly list each of the Echoes of Death boxes as they tend to be available for purchase more often:
Echoes of Death I
Expansion Synergies: None
Rating: B
Miniature Gear: Generic & Spidicules
There are balance problems with Echoes of Death I; the strains vary from being really underwhelming all the way to utterly busted. However, the Backstabber Strain is a standout wonder and even the most broken or bad strains have their place.
Echoes of Death II
Expansion Synergies: White Lion, Gorm, Winter Solstice Lucy
Rating: A-
Miniature Gear: Gorm, White Lion, Phoenix
Convalescer is one of the most problematic and overpowered fighting arts in the entire franchise; and Rolling Gait makes the best weapon type (bow) even more powerful, but in a manner that helps other survivors so I am mostly forgiving of that one. Shieldarang and Infernal Rhythm on the other hand are both powerful and fun to use. Rhythm sadly suffers from Team Death's constant overwhelming need to make Instruments noisy so your survivors can be eaten without counterplay or mitigation during hunt event 10. Currently the Gorn (Gorm Horn) is the only instrument without noisy, though there are rumblings that will change in Campaigns of Death – so the Grim Muffler from Winter Solstice Lucy is a pretty much essential partner to this set.
Echoes of Death III
Expansion Synergies: Slenderman
Rating: A-
Miniature Gear: Dragon King, Sunstalker & Generic
This selection contains some fun options without being too overpowered; Armored Fist is very notable because of how it is a lot of effort to unlock while also being really fun and working incredibly well with the Slender Man specific arm accessories. Sword Oath is sadly pretty weak compared to the rest due to it deleting itself from your survivor on a flee brain trauma. Stockist represents a relatively balanced bow fighting art as you have to Concentrate before using the powerful attack.
The Pattern Gear
Campaign Essentiality: Low but Auto Include
Expansion Synergies: Varies
Expansion Clashes: None
Difficulty Modifier: Makes the game easier
Another catch all entry here, this time for the pattern gear. In essence, when you own pattern gear, you should include every single piece of it that is allowable by the inclusion rules in the box. Pattern gear is a fun wrinkle that gives you little goals and interesting unique gear. The power of this gear varies, which is why you should include all of it that is valid for a campaign, the bad/situation stuff is the price paid for the good and powerful stuff.
Here's a list of all the Pattern Gear content and what it synergises with:
- 10th Anniversary Survivors – White Lion, Generic
- Erza of Dedheim – Phoenix, Generic, Summer Cyrus Beta, Easter Aya
- Halloween II – White Lion, Screaming Antelope, Generic
- Halloween Flower Costume – Requires Flower Knight
- Oktoberfest Aya – People of the Lantern, Lonely tree, note: requires Cloth
- Halloween Ringtail – Generic, Ringtail Vixen White Box (Bookmark), Future Proofed for Halloween monsters
- Halloween White Speaker – Dung Beetle Knight & Slender Man required, future proofed for Halloween monsters
- Summer Goth Twilight Knight – People of the Lantern only
- Winter Solstice Lucy – Best Pattern Gear in the game at the moment, essential synergy with Instruments (White Lion, Flower Knight, Generic, Gorm) and the Infernal Rhythm strain fighting art from Echoes of Death 2.
Ringtail Vixen Bookmark
Campaign Essentiality: Auto Include
Expansion Synergies: Minor Pattern Synergy
Expansion Clashes: None
Difficulty Modifier: Helps stop early game campaigns falling off the wheels
Easily the best single Quality of Life content in the game; this simple bookmark helps smooth out the early game by not having your first 1 on the intimacy table net -2 population. There is little that can make a new campaign incredibly miserable to the degree that flubbing the intimacy can achieve. The survivor you gain is also not automatically useful; she gets a sufficient downside that keeps her balanced.
This is the gold standard to which small box content should be compared to and it is a hard 'must have' for all Kingdom Death Players.
Before & Beyond the Wall
Remember back when cards were not blurred to the point of unreadability so we could make informed decisions about our purchases? What a time they were.
Campaign Essentiality: Low
Expansion Synergies: Gorm, Sunstalker, Flower Knight
Expansion Clashes: Mild limited Cloth resource issues
Difficulty Modifier: Reduces Difficulty
Aya's first two boxes provide the contents for the Vagabond Armor; however the two boxes are not created equal; Before the Wall has the essential Vagabond Armor cards. Beyond has some optional variant gear cards. So you only really needto purchase Before the Wall; which also comes with a piece of gear that may be relevant when the Ivory Dragon expansion reaches us.
Vagabond Armor is a fun variant Leather Armor set that has very powerful sword synergies; any expansion with swords or sword related options loves this armor set. In particular The Flower Knight's L3 locked Secret Fighting Art 'True Blade' loves Vagabond Armor because the head is not covered.
If you like swords, get Before the Wall. Beyond the wall helps if you want to get the armor online earlier and cheaper and should be considered an expansion to this expansion.
Death Crown Inheritor Aya
Campaign Essentiality: Low but Auto Include
Expansion Synergies: Phoenix
Expansion Clashes: None
Difficulty Modifier: Neutral
This later release of Aya moderately improves the Phoenix fight because it gives us another Legendary AI card; that reduces the amount of times Deja Vu turns up, which is a net positive for all aspects of a campaign. Otherwise it's yet another bow and an arrow; both of which are interesting, but the Phoenix did not need a second bow in its craftable gear – it wanted a whip made out of the Phoenix Whiskers.
You will always include this in a campaign due to the Phoenix being everywhere, but as I reviewed it previously, the Arc Bow and the Hollowpoint Arrow are both at least equal in power to these two new options. So it's more of the same, and really this one doesn't do enough to improve the Phoenix position.
Easter Twilight Knight
Campaign Essentiality: Auto Include
Expansion Synergies: None
Expansion Clashes: None
Difficulty Modifier: Moderately increases complexity during the settlement phase.
Oh, it's the Trouble with Tribbles KDM edition. The Gibbering Hairmite is a new vermin card and it's fine, but usually it's going to cause a little annoyance when gained and after that you should probably just feed it to a Plebian survivor (Plebians/plebs are survivors with no notable features, they're the generic bog standard survivors with no injuries or special bonuses).
You'll always play with this one, but you don't need to go buy it as it's not the best value.
Fade
Campaign Essentiality: Auto Include
Expansion Synergies: Red Witches (promised future), Before/Beyond the Wall
Expansion Clashes: None
Difficulty Modifier: Reduces difficulty
Fade's Basic Hunt Event card gives us access to a choice about gaining either a very good early game sword that has a balanced downside or +1 population if you can take the bab home. Both of these are great, you'll always put this one in your basic hunt event deck, it's just good.
Twilight Lunar Knight
Campaign Essentiality: Auto Include
Expansion Synergies: None
Expansion Clashes: None
Difficulty Modifier: overall neutral
This is another box with a small amount of good content. You'll always play with this one if you have it. It's not an essential purchase due to the high price, but if you also want the miniatures, this one is a good one.
White Sunlion Armor White Box
Campaign Essentiality: Auto Include in People of the Sun
Expansion Synergies: White Lion, People of the Sun
Expansion Clashes: Not allowed outside of People of the Sun
Difficulty Modifier: Provides more options, options make the game easier
This version of the Sunlion Armor is the 'canon' version, with the beta content now moving to a questionable position due to this update. I'll address that in the beta content section, but here, at this time the simple question is; are you playing People of the Sun? Then add this in.
“Winter Holidays” Santa Satan
Campaign Essentiality: Low but easy to include
Expansion Synergies: None, but may have future synergies with Atnas?
Expansion Clashes: None
Difficulty Modifier: Reduces difficulty
Note:REQUIRES Flower Knight to unlock strain first time.
The Lump of Atnas is a weird little basic resource because of how it is worded. It's essentiality something that needs the Flower Knight to unlock at first and then it just sits in your basic deck providing resources and survivors when you have enough of them.
“Halloween” Devil Satan
Campaign Essentiality: None
Expansion Synergies: None
Expansion Clashes: None
Difficulty Modifier: Greatly Reduces Difficulty at a cost
I don't much care for this content, I would rather always get the Adventure Sword as that's rare enough. Having this self immolating spear as an alternative punishment for being insane isn't something I gel with. I leave this one in the box all of the time.
As an aside; this should have been the first [Pumpkin Symbol] Monster.
Percival
Campaign Essentiality: None
Expansion Synergies: Minor Sword Synergies so Gorm, Sunstalker, Flower Knight and Before the Wall, Willow Beta Content
Expansion Clashes: None
Difficulty Modifier: Makes things a tiny, infinitesimal smaller bit harder
Percival is just added content, if you own it you will add it in and it gives you a very humdrum secret fighting art. Percival is pretty cool, her pet The Black Knight is very cool, but this content is not cool (or good value for money). That written; you will get use out of it when combined with the Novel Sword Mastery (Willow). So this is one that has gotten stronger with time due to the sheer amount of support that and while I don't consider it essential, I will always add it in because of its low impact.
Pin-ups of Death Volumes 1 & 2
Campaign Essentiality:Low
Expansion Synergies:Sunstalker (one gear card)
Expansion Clashes:None
Difficulty Modifier:Reduces Difficulty
The content in these boxes that matters is the Dark Seamstress who offers cheaper but worse alternatives to the body slot gear options for Rawhide, Leather, Metal (keyword) and Cycloid Scale armor sets. And also the Strange Spot is a well balanced event that can bail out a settlement who has suffered a lot of losses while also not completely ruining one gear tableau slot with its cursed item.
There's only two boxes with relevant in game content, they're very expensive for what they do, and if you are not a miniature painter it is better to collect them via the 1.6 update pack due to how expensive the Pinups of Death series is.
Valentines Day Twilight Knight
Campaign Essentiality: Auto Include
Expansion Synergies: Gorm, Sunstalker and anything that vomits matter like retch, bile, vomit, puke etc.
Expansion Clashes: None
Difficulty Modifier: Greatly reduces difficulty
When you get the Scrap Smelting innovation, you get the Scoopy Club, it's a free club with good stats and a solid ability that is relatively easy to activate during many showdowns. It does make the campaign easier, but you don't haveto use it if you don't want it when the settlement gains it.
The 50mm scale miniature is absolutely awful, but I love the 35mm one. In fact that 50mm miniature is so tasteless I might go making a custom monster for her in time for next year's Valentine's Day (as long as the GCE arrives on time).
Halloween Twilight Knight (Jack O' Lantern)
Campaign Essentiality: None
Expansion Synergies: None
Expansion Clashes: None
Difficulty Modifier: Neutral
This content changed with a pattern card, but that was not well known, so I've not seen that version. The original version that came with the Halloween Twilight Knight is bad. Skip.
Easter Aya
Campaign Essentiality: None but Auto-include
Expansion Synergies: Dung Beetle Knight, Erza of Dedheim, Summer Cyrus Beta
Expansion Clashes: None
Difficulty Modifier: Reduces Difficulty
This content has gotten better and better with the passing of time thanks to the expansion of 'gain benefits from being doomed mechanics'. It's an excellent piece of gear, but that heavy keyword is a hard one to swallow at times.
Swashbuckler
Campaign Essentiality: None but auto include in People of the Lantern and campaigns that can gain saviors (Echoes of Death I or The Lonely Tree)
Expansion Synergies: People of the Lantern, Echoes of Death I, The Lonely Tree
Expansion Clashes: None
Difficulty Modifier: Neutral, but adds fun
I love the corsair coat, it's exactly what I want from a daft free item. The way it is linked to saviors would be a problem if you had to pay to craft it, but as it's given for free during a weird dream. Coat stand go pew pew, perfection.
Twilight Knight Allison
Campaign Essentiality: Vital for People of the Lantern
Expansion Synergies: None of note
Expansion Clashes: Only usable in People of the Lantern
Difficulty Modifier: Reduces difficulty in a welcome fashion surrounding the chore of the Twilight Sword
If you like playing People of the Lantern a lot, this is a must have inclusion. Every piece of gear in the box is great for smoothing out the Twilight Sword/Hooded Stranger experience; it should be rolled into the core game by default.
X-Mas Twilight Knight
Campaign Essentiality: Low but auto include
Expansion Synergies: None other than it's an axe
Expansion Clashes: None (though it is a little redundant with the Slender Man's Katana)
Difficulty Modifier: Reduces Difficulty
Xmaxe is good, really good, insanely good if you know how to abuse it. I keep it in, I avoid performing insanity gain abuse like Hiccup/Gorm and accept this is broken if you kill the Legendary Phoenix and then wield this.
Till Death Do Us Part
Campaign Essentiality: Auto-include
Expansion Synergies: None
Expansion Clashes: None
Difficulty Modifier: Adds options, which always reduces difficulty
This oversized card that comes with the Intimacy Survivors Amanda & Steve offers two alternatives to the core game Partners; one gives you a 'duos' fighting style that requires a little loosening of the normal rules to make it work (this has been confirmed to be the correct way to interpret it, both survivors use their activation on the same survivor's act) or alternatively you can pick a really good way of ensuring that your survivors pass on apositive attribute and a fighting art to a new survivor. This allows you to maintain settlement playstyles for specific weapon types in addition to using sculpture. It's GREAT!
White Speaker Sword Hunter
Campaign Essentiality: Auto-include, but not essential
Expansion Synergies: None
Expansion Clashes: None
Difficulty Modifier: Net neutral
Another basic hunt event that gives us Wales' signature folklore sword Excalibur; it's a neat weapon and the entire thing works well as long as you are fine with its wielder being at risk of death when returning each settlement phase. I'm fine with that risk because I know it could happen; it's the price one pays.
Elgnirk the Chaos Elf
Campaign Essentiality: Zero
Expansion Synergies: Zero
Expansion Clashes: Zero
Difficulty Modifier: Who cares? It's content you can only use if you're playing over the holidays instead of spending time with others. Play with it then if you want.
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh................... What a waste of material this box is.
Holiday White Speaker Nico
Campaign Essentiality: Auto-include
Expansion Synergies: None
Expansion Clashes: None
Difficulty Modifier: Punishes you for cheating, did you know cheating was a legal mechanic in games of KDM? Now you do!
This one is an expensive, but excellent piece of content that I highly recommend for anyone because it is another settlement event (always nice to have); it helps players fudge situations where randomness has just completely ruined things (isn't it nice that monsters usually can't critically wound, that really sucks in Gloom/Frosthaven!) It's also available in the 1.6 Legendary Pack iirc.
Beta Rules
Campaign Essentiality: Auto-include
Expansion Synergies: Varies
Expansion Clashes: Varies (usually none)
Difficulty Modifier: More options means more power, so it reduces campaign difficulty
This is a really large set of options so I'm going to list each one below with any expansion requirements (many of them also have generic crafting costs as an alternative) and one or two lines about thematically and a rating between 1 and 5 with how good I think they are. You can check out longer form discussion on these by clicking the Review tag at the bottom of this post.
- Lantern Armor Aya – Generic – Auto-include in every campaign – 5/5
- Summer Aya – Generic – Auto-include in every campaign – 5/5
- Badar – Spidicules/Generic – Really good, fun weapon, has no mastery at the moment – 4/5
- Summer Cyrus – Flower Knight – Really good, has synergy with Doomed strategies – 5/5
- Doll – No Synergies – This one is fun if you do not abuse it with Crystaline Skin – 2/5
- White Sunlion Armor Erza – White Lion - This is the version you can partially fit into any campaign, I keep it included as another armor option. I do not use this when playing People of the Sun. – 2/5
- Grimmory – Gorm/generic – Great dagger weapons with paired design that actually works – 4/5
- Hellebore – Generic – A sweet early game option to help smooth out gear for the first 2-3 showdowns. Great stuff – 5/5
- Screaming Oni Armor Lucy – I love this one to pieces, more armor options are ALWAYS great because of how much of the game's gear space is taken up by them – 5/5
- Novice – Generic – Really good early game/new survivor weapon, fantastic design – 5/5
- Pascha – Generic – Amazing alternative to the Zanbato, scissor weapon type has no mastery though. - 4/5
- Reapokratis – Slender Man/Generic – Hybrid Armors are always good, this is an excellent alternative to have in your options – 5/5
- Vitanvox – 2/5ths of a great armor set, is really interesting to use already – 5/5
- Willow – Novel Sword technique is much better than the normal version, the weapon is also a wonderful addition to the game – 5/5
As you can see, overall the track record for beta content gear trends towards the higher side, this means that despite the cost involved in getting these, they are a net positive for players who invest a lot of game time into games (or have a lot more spending power than someone like I).
White Speaker
Campaign Essentiality: Moderate, will auto-include
Expansion Synergies: None
Expansion Clashes: None
Difficulty Modifier: Reduces Difficulty
Both items you get from this box are really good, the dagger in particular is so powerful that some people talk about leaving out of their campaigns because of how much it trivialises gaining Fist & Tooth. Myself I find F&T mastery gathering to be a necessary chore, so I am happy with anything that speeds that up and then also allows for working on Dagger Mastery once F&T is completed.
The second gear card; Bloodskin is one of the only ways players can remove bleed tokens outside of Bandages.
Take all of that and add into it how this expands on the White Speaker story event (Storytelling Innovation) and it's just good content; you don't haveto use the Speaker Cult Knife every time you get it. It's just nice to have around for situations where your settlement is struggling and you need a short term power boost; just one hit, don't worry, once we're done I'll stop using the Speaker Cult Knife. I'm not addicted, I can give it up any time. I promise.
Part four is coming soon, it will be not be next Friday; because I have another boss battler I want to review due to how good it is. When I release part four I will also put out a complete 'stitched together' version of this series which you can link anyone to once it goes public a few days later.
Comments
Paddan
Btw, I'm not quite sure how to interpret the Auto-include scoring for Campaign Essentiality when it comes to White Boxes. It seems a bit generous to me that all Auto-include white box items "fix issues or plug gaps in the core game's experience and they are as close to staples as possible". I guess one could rather interpret the scoring as "if you own the expansion or have money to spend, including it in a campaign will only serve to enhance the experience"? In other words, it appears that the rating here is a bit less granular than the tier rating in the White Box Buyers Guides, where only the S tier items are in fact "must haves".
Paddan
Thanks for an excellent article as always! I assume there should be a full stop at the end of the last sentence before the "Small Box and Shop Content" headline, or is a part of that paragraph missing?
Fen
Absolutely. It's a marathon just to keep up with it all. Even more so when you're located in Europe 😓
Gyorgy Boda
This article reminds me of the brutality of the KDM, but on the collection meta level:) Your summary shows me how utterly hopeless it is for me to catch up...like...ever with this game. Even if I had the willingness .... it is not just Poots & Co does not seems to make our life easier, it is as if they deliberately tried to make it harder. I am so much love with the world and the setting, and the more I read about these summaries the more upset I get about those hurdles rolled in front of me. It would be so nice to have a yearly gameplay box or something like that. But yeah, never going to happen.
