Though I understand most people like the extra gear at the beginning, I find it better to get the extra innovation at the beginning and continue to innovative every single time (including during nemesis years). I find the second lion very challenging but not something that difficult to manage pushing for extra innovation at the beginning so you can unlock paint for ly3 fight and start hunting lv2s.
And that's not something players who are in the beginning and intermediate stages of KDM play experience; the group which these guides are aimed at, should be doing. You need to be experienced and know the game well with a few successes under your belt before taking such steps.
@@FenBossBattlers not trying to contest your video, you are well above me in experience when it comes down to KDM, I'm just sharing a different path, which as you mentioned might be more suitable for people with more experience or willing to experiment. I don't think there are any right answers even a "correct" answer can get you killed or set back in KDM.
@@SinamonXIndeed, I completely agree. It's part of what makes the game such a joy, many different paths to victory and sometimes even the right decision turns out badly.
I think early innovation can cut both ways. If we're being honest, there's only a dozen or so innovations of real value, and you get ~20 LYs to innovate. The real question is whether getting a "game changer" an LY or two earlier is worth the price of stumbling behind those first two LYs. And even one Total Party Wipe and you lose the extra Lantern Year of innovations. And I think the answer comes from what happens in LY1 and LY2. If you TPW or Game Over because you innovated, then *obviously* you shouldn't have innovated, but Fen covered that. If you know you won't Game Over (unless bad luck), we can put that aside. But there's two other "gear beats innovation" realities, and that (honestly both scenarios) comes from finishing L1 Lions a year earlier! If you play your resources right, these are the things you can buy skipping 2 innovations 1. Incrementally more resources because you start on Antelope earlier and/or have some deadly gear. It's fair to say you average 2-3 more resources per encounter an LY earlier for each early innovation you skip, making the total cost of early innovations more like 6 resources. 2. Earlier L2 monsters ALSO give more resources, to the tune of 2 resources per LY. This means each of those early innovations are up to 8 resources each in opportunity cost. 3. The "skill check" for non-newbies isn't Butcher, it's Kingsman L1. A LOT of players just hold aside 4 pop for him, but if you didn't innovate early, you usually can win decisively with good shield coverage. That saves you 3.5 (King's Curse) survivors, a bunch of King's Step arts, Pottery if you have it, and possibly a Steel Sword (always nice). 4. Society *several* LY's earlier. And the return isn't "two more innovations". It's "Getting Painting, Song, and Clan of death a year or two earlier". Don't get me wrong, that's awesome! But are they really so time-sensitive to account for a loss of up to 20 resources and 4 survivors? And the worst non-catastrophy case of choosing 1-2 early innovations *includes* a -1 innovation penalty. This is the funny part. If you count "Society" as an innovation, you could end up broken even on innovations if you skipped LY1 and LY2 vs if you try to innovate every year. It's still winnable. I've done it. But momentum carries so much value in KDM that I'd never want to sacrifice those 6 early resources and 2 early endeavors
@@Novagenesis Everything in this game is somewhat conditional. I feel we would disagree on what gatekeeps LY2 monsters. I want to mention I dont disregard the need for powerful gear, what I am against is the thought that you can only have powerful gear if you dont innovate. I will try to be as thorough with my thought process. Innovations increase your survival, drastically improve options and gameplay and act as gatekeepers of a lot of gear. I do believe innovations are worth investing on early in the game rather than later. . My opinion on antelope lv1 quarry is not great, I almost always skip it, why? because resource distribution for antelope is relatively bad for the early stage of the game and antelope lv2 is truly not that much a different challenge from antelope lv1, early in the game you really need armor and the "powerful weapons" you need you might only need 1 or 2, therefore if you can take on an antelope lv1 might as well go for an antelope lv2. Yes this will make for relatively challenging LY1 and Ly2 fights , but by LY3 you shuold be ahead of the curve and do antelope LV2. Deadly gear? use fist and tooth if you are going the deadly route, you still dont want to damage with strength anyways. Earlier lv2 monsters... We may have different playing styles, if you are going for gear in the first lys you might be more inclined to play as a brawler. This is where I believe i disagree the most, LV2 monsters are fun only if you have the tools to play the game... these tools are survival actions, the quirks of lv2 monsters can only be managed effectively by survival actions and I dont find gear good enough to manage lV2 monsters, their movement and extra actions are far too superior than the options given to survivors by available gear in the first lys. I agree the skill check for non noobies is Kingsman... I dont agree shield is the real route of beating the Kingsman. how can you decisevely win this fight if you have not gotten ammonia(shields)? Yes... conditional, because you can tell ammonia is free from fighting white lions all of it is random, you have a better chance to get it if you keep trying to innovate, also dash/surge you really must get them by this fight. Dash and surge are an absolute requirement to be unlocked before LY6 Armored strangers event might bite you really hard. I am not sure of the math on losing 20 resources as you are really not losing 20 resources. If anything you are making more resources by following the innovation route, LV2 monsters do not give you 2 more resources for ly... Antelope lv 2 is probably at least + 4 in a bad day and a great hunt agains antelope can be over +8 than a ly1 monster. From my point of view that is totally worth it.
thank you so much i watched all your video about the core campaign! me and my brother have been playing for years and have never beat it lol your videos are really helping me think of crafting in a whole new way! I think this campaign we got it! We actually do innovate every year haha XD but i do see what you mean, we can try to skip a year to make up!
Fantastic video! Newer players look at puzzled when I vote to immediately Innovate Symposium once it appears until they realize how great card draw is. Keep up the great work!
Wow, 2 comleted campaigns and at least 5 abandoned ones in and only now when I hear you say it do I realize it's "once per settlement phase"... I've been living a lie so many years... but thank you for this, it again changed my perspective on the game:)
Yeah, that impulse is really strong. Just tell yourself that once you get really confident with the showdowns you can start innovating earlier and earlier. There is a valid strategy in the core game of innovating for early paint and then fighting an early L2 White Lion with the aid of founding stones. But that's for players with a couple of campaigns under their belt, who are not the target audience for my video series.
you're making videos of staggering quality and thank you for making them. one thing I think that's missing from this video especially given this video already goes over spoilers. That being the interaction between the Hooded Knight event and records allowing you to burn records and set back both the Watcher and Smoke Knight by 10 YEARS offering you ten more innovations indirectly. I know it's a rare as heck occurrence but it's so pivotal to the flow of innovations in the lantern campaign. will you cover the event deck in a later video?
Thanks. I ended up omitting the Hooded Knight because I would have needed to create a second spoiler section and for the most part I am trying to not do PotLantern specific stuff here except where absolutely necessary, like next week's video. Yes, I'll be looking at the Settlement Event deck at some point as long as I can figure out enough relevant and salient things to say.
A quick question with Synchronized Strike, you mentioned in the video that both the blue and purple survivors get the +1 accuracy and strength when they’re in position, but I feel like the wording doesn’t say that, am I off there? It seems like for the purple survivor to get the bonus both survivors would have to at least move up 1 space. Would you mind clarifying this?
Both Syhcronized Strike survivors in position on diagram. Blue survivor attacks. Gets the bonus because Purple is in the right spot. "Purple" survivor acts, now they're the blue survivor and they get to do the same thing because the previous blue survivor is now the purple survivor, activating their own Synchornized Strike for the process. Unless it's been FAQ'd recently, each Synch Strike can be activated once per round as they are independent SFAS.
@@FenBossBattlers ok so they don’t have to be in exactly the same position indicated on the card, as long as one survivor is on the other side of the monster parallel to the attacking survivor they’ll both get the attack bonus. Thanks for clarification!
I don't recall if this is a correction or was a 1.6 change, but I *THINK* it was a 1.6 change. Plague treatment is now tied to Ammonia, not Bloodletting.
They're both involved. The 3 to 8 result is the one I'm referencing, which is 'die unless you get treated'. Ammonia is the permanent solution for curing if you don't have Bloodletting and removing Plague from the timeline. At some point I'll go through the settlement event cards and properly discuss it, it'll just take them. 😅
Fantastic video as per usual! I do think I hold a different opinion of the question of innovating in early years. I think the way you present it in the video is a little too strongly on the side of not innovating early, I also think the "always be innovating" perspective is a bit off too. I think the decision to innovate in the early years is very nuanced and depends a lot of the exact resources / endeavors / experience your group has with the game. If you are newer to KDM (less experience vs node 1 monster) or came back with very few bone resources (I think weapons are higher value than armor or grease in year 1 - though activating rawhide headband is obviously a power spike too), or had a couple of deaths in the first year - those are all good reasons to play it safe and skip innovating. But innovating in those early years should be seen as a push your luck mechanic that has pretty high rewards if you pull it off and then don't die. Getting to surge or dash is a huge power spike, getting ammonia to avoid dying from plague is amazing, and generally getting to the stronger later game innovations (Saga, COD, etc) earlier in your campaign can make a huge difference to your overall campaign outcome. So I'd say don't blindly innovate every turn or blindly skip it the first couple of turns, there is a lot of upside to doing it if you are in a comfortable position to do so.
That's a topic I've written a lot about, of course it's always nuanced and dependant on a lot of situations. But we've not gotten to recording the video about handling specific early game decisions and exactly when you pull the trigger on various things anyway. The key thing here is one shouldn't just mindlessly push the 'make technology button'; instead I want people to be asking the question "Is it right for me to push the button?" The first step in that is experiencing the game flow when you avoid the button for a few years, so you can develop your gear and improve your showdown skills. Most new people I've spoken to over the half a decade I've been doing this want to push the button over and over without ever stopping to consider 'what happens if I play a campaign where I don't do that?' They can't make the decision between the two extremes because they haven't tried both to see where to thread the needle. Another "hidden" factor I'd also light to highlight is this video on innovations specific to the core game without any expansions. PotL has the Hooded Stranger coming when you reach enough innovations, holding off on that additional piece of the puzzle for even a couple of years is a massive boon to the newer player who doesn't yet know how to game the event and leverage the Twilight Sword.
@@FenBossBattlers Unless you roll a 41 in LY1, then all bets are off (Free Twilight Sword) But I agree. Obviously if you hit the cub and then crit a few resource locations in LY1 (especially if the Lion licks his wounds and you repeat) then Innovating is on the table. But I totally agree there are significantly more reasons and situations that innovating in LY1 is a bad idea. I think LY2 is a more of a coin toss, but if you are starved for any one resource type, it screams "skip me" as well.
As a Sicilian, I am offended. Also, I made a bet with the Dark Tastemaker and made the joke, "never bet agaist a Sicilian when Kingdom Death is on the line."
Yup. "This new generation of survivors' eyes have better adapted to the darkness. All survivors gain + 1 permanent accuracy...[Snip]" When testing I have to undo all my milestone progress for those campaigns because otherwise I'm playing in a weird world that I don't see many other players discuss or experience.
Fen love your content but only new players should be skiping a chance to inovate. Its like investing you can never get that opertunity to inovate back. That bone sword is eventualy going to be useless the inovation will pay dividends for the rest of the game even if it does nothing but pull a card out of the deck so you dont draw it later. Even if my first inovation was blank i would take it over gear for all but a first play through.
