Arc Philosophy & Knowledge: Part 23 – Gourmandism Knowledges (Patreon)

The Juice is Worth the Squeeze

As discussed last time, the Gourmandism rank up tables are not the most beneficial for the survivors who are developing in them, there's a higher amount of negatives than other philosophies can have. However, as all things in board games, if the carrot (reward) is good enough then the stick (punishment) is worth baring. There are some unique and powerful Knowledges in this selection and as such I am more than willing to work on levelling up a sufficient amount of Gourmands in order to get the knowledges unlocked and into the pool of potential options. There's one Knowledge that I pretty much consider a “must have” when Gourmandism is an option, so at a minimum I'll work towards unlocking that one as soon as Gourmandism becomes an option.

We've got a total of five different knowledges in this selection, three of which require some levelling up in observations and two that do not. These knowledges focus around the Consume mechanic, but also have lines around positive attribute tokens, permanent stat gains, injury protection and even an extra gear slot. All of this means Gourmandism knowledges are incredibly powerful for any type of survivor and absolute powerhouse hunters can be formed from the use of these tier 2 knowledges.

Health – Core tenet

Type: Offensive

Stages: 3

Observations Required: 4/5/-

Advancement: Consume during the hunt or showdown/Consume during the hunt or showdown/-

Lumi Costs: 2/3/4

Bonuses: Consuming during hunt or showdown gives +1 strength token/Consuming during hunt or showdown gives +1 strength or accuracy token/Consuming during hunt or showdown gives +1 strength, accuracy or speed token

Parallels: Red Fist SFA, Monster Meat gear and so on

Our core tenet focuses around the keyword Consume this is something that is printed on gear cards, terrain cards and in some hunt events. This ties into the Ravenous drawback because when you consume that required gear or resource you gain a token in exchange from Health. The best token is front loaded into this knowledge which is interesting because in general terms for weapon design Strength is more important than accuracy which is more important than speed. The reason for this is the punishment for missing is less than the punishment for hitting but failing to wound; that's a core part of how the Hit Location system works in Kingdom Death.

However, this doesn't mean that this knowledge gets weaker as it levels up, it gains more options, and giving additional options to a player is always something that provides power. It's just that unless your weapon is already wounding on a really low roll, one will pick Strength ahead of the other two options a lot of the time.

Due to this core facet of KDM's combat mechanics I generally don't actively try and level this one up, I'm really happy with just paying 2 lumi for the strength tokens, especially if Health is on a non-gourmandism survivor. The extra lumi costs are fair for the second and third levels, but this is an unusual knowledge in that the thing I desire most from it is unlocked right from the start.

The speed unlock at tier three is interesting however because it can take some weapons with powerful Perfect hit abilities like the Acid-Tooth Daggers and give you more chances to generate those automatic wounds that the Perfect hits offer. While the old “infinite” wounds that bypass the Hit Location deck that could be achieved with the Counterweighted Axe is now gone (thankfully) we can still have fairer versions of the whole “reduce a survivor's accuracy so they only hit on Perfect hits and then generate lots of speed for a survivor who only triggers the perfect hit auto-wounds.” So if you have weapons that benefit from higher speed, Spears for example, or have accuracy issues such as bows, the higher levels of Health still offer something for an affordable price.

Appreciation

Type: Conservation

Stages: 1

Observations Required: -

Advancement: -

Lumi Costs: 5

Bonuses: During the showdown, when you would archive a resource/gear have a 50% chance of not doing so.

Parallels: Somewhat unique

Appreciation is mostly designed as a partial protection against the gear that may get consumed by a Ravenous Gourmand. Having a 50% chance to cancel the archiving here is nice, the fact that it also works against any other potential archiving during the showdown is also a positive that should be remembered. However, excluding this one from working during the hunt is in my opinion a large negative against this particular knowledge. Gear destruction tends to happen a bit more often during the hunt phase over the showdown phase and given that most of the other Gourmandism consuming options cover both of the phases I find the omission of the hunt phase here to be a major black mark against this knowledge.

The bottom line here though is that it costs a quite a lot of lumi for what it does, and as such this is one that I'll use if it lands on a given survivor, but I am rarely going to pay for Appreciation if it turns up at the Forum. This may change if a given campaign set up has a lot of archiving of gear during the showdown, perhaps in People of the Skull with their Skull Helms, but that's the exception, normally I'm going to skip on this and look for something more broadly useful.

It has places where it can work, but most of the time this is just a Knowledge you'll keep until you get a better one in the forum. Though if you ever have a giant stack of founding stones there's a silly build possible there. Get pelted with stones idiot.

Digestion

Type: Statistical Gains

Stages: 2

Observations Required: 3/1

Advancement: Spend <bolt> to consume one of your positive attribute tokens. Archive it./Spend <bolt> to consume one of your positive attribute tokens. Archive it and gain its effects permanently. (These both are limited to once per lantern year aka LOPY)

Lumi Costs: 2/6

Bonuses: Stat gains

Parallels: There are many places where permanent stats can be gained. Too many to list

Digestion is a really good knowledge once it is levelled up, its clear goal is to be used alongside Health in order to transform a survivor into their perfect form over a number of years. However, anything that provides additional positive attribute tokens can work really well, for example the Fish of Abundance promotional white box gear card from the Lunar Knight gives a +1 luck token on arrival. So that can be consumed with the goal of reaching maximum luck.

What else is there to say, it's simple and good. You can combine it directly with Health and a gear card with a consume ability or with things that give positive attribute tokens. There are a whole range of these out there including other knowledges that can create their own tokens for you to devour. It's balanced with that LOPY but still powerful.

Gastromancer

Type: Gear Loadout Enhancing

Stages: 1

Observations Required: -

Advancement: -

Lumi Costs: 4

Bonuses: An extra gear slot

Parallels: Sun String & Quiver I guess? It's pretty unique.

Gastromancer for me is the single most important and desirable knowledge in this entire line. That is because it grants the Second Stomach status card, which looks like this.

There is for some unknown reason only one copy of that status card in the Gambler's Chest box, which is one of those frustrating limitations that has no good reason to occur. This is not a unique knowledge, you can put it on all your hunting survivors and honestly you might want to given that slot limitations are one of the largest things that hold back survivors. Suddenly we're in a position where a typical armor set only takes up half of your available slots, that's absolutely huge and it is done in a very fair manner because the gear card you place in the tummy pouch can't connect any affinities because it's located on its own. You'll want to keep something that doesn't provide vital affinities or need puzzle affinities/positional placement in here, but that is still a lot of possible options and there is virtually no build that isn't improved without having a 10th slot.

I ended up making proxies of this card in order to have a sufficient number and I am glad I did. One of the more head scratching issues that surrounds the physical printing of cards is when we don't get enough to cover the right number of survivors. While it is fair enough that gear cards get printed at a max of three because it is very rare you'll need four of the same gear cards (Rawhide is the thing that gets closest); things like the Butcher not having an Infectious Lunacy card for the Scout or the Phoenix not having a Spiral Age one, or the Hand missing a 5th set of Aura cards are absolutely baffling especially given that the Gambler's Chest was designed with the Scout as a core part of the game experience. It's a real shame and one of the few black marks against the Gambler's Chest as a whole.

To return to Gastromancer however, this is an incredibly good knowledge and something that I want on as many survivors as possible, especially the scouts because when you have only 4 slots, gaining a whole extra slot, thereby increasing your slot total by 25% is a massive boon when compared to the 11.11% slot increase that your traditional 9 slot survivor gets.

It's great, grab it every chance you get, hopefully in combination with Romanticism's extra knowledges slot knowledge Potentia Est II.

Juggernaut

Type: Defensive

Stages: 2

Observations Required: 4/-

Advancement: Use this knowledge/-

Lumi Costs: 3/6

Bonuses: When you suffer a severe injury you may ignore it by archiving 2 positive attribute tokens/ When you suffer a severe injury you may ignore it by archiving 1 positive attribute token

Parallels: Tough, Dried Acanthus

Our last knowledge is very much a tank orientated one, this allows us to run more closely to the edge by spending attribute tokens in order to prevent severe injuries. The immediate space where this works really well is when used in combination with the Gorm's Gorment Armor/Regeneration Suit. That is a set of armor that wants players to tank severe injuries and regenerate them. However the big issue that holds it back is the death results. With Juggernaut we can accept the results that can be healed by the Regeneration Suit and save our positive attribute tokens for ignoring deaths. This works better than Dried Acanthus because we've got control over when it happens and it's stronger than the Life Potion because it is repeatable and it takes up a knowledge slot over a gear slot. You may still want the Life Potion because it can cancel auto-deaths from other sources, not just severe injuries, but it is a luxury at this point rather than an essential.

Outside of tools like the Gorm ones we're not really able to heavily leverage this, but it is absolutely nice to have it, especially for survivors with good ways of generating positive attribute tokens in multiples. With that you can lean into less armored builds, especially Crystal Skin survivors who love having ways of counteracting their severe injury fragility. This one is powerful in the right situation, but I don't think you should be buying it from the Forum unless you have good reason to do so (such as The Butcher's coming up and your tank wants protection from Bite).

Summary

There is only one weaker Knowledge in all of these five (Appreciation) and even it has a place in the game and is something you can run if archival during the showdown is possible either through ravenous, the monster's AI cards or self archiving powerhouse gear cards (like Founding Stones). That is why I think that the pain of going through the Gourmandism ranks is worth the pay-off. These are all at a minimum situationally powerful and in the case of Second Stomach one of the best knowledges in the entire game.

I am always happy to draw Gourmandism as one of my tier 2 knowledges, it's definitely in the running for one of the best, though I think that it has stiff competition from at least two of the other options. It also has some really great thematic flavour and I appreciate getting this one to the table every time I can.

You can read more of my thoughts and experiences with the various philosophies/knowledges in the Arc Survivors and Philosophies collection.