Top Offensive Gear Items in the Core Game and Gen 1 Expansions: Part 8 (Patreon)

These are the final five gear cards on my list, these are the absolute best offensive tools in the game bar none.  I hope you've had fun speculating what they are before this post has come out.

So, here we go:

5. Digging Claws/Calficied Digging Claws - DBK

Katars are good, low speed weapons are good, Sharp is good, Pickaxes are good.  The Digging Claws from the DBK combine all of these things together in one sweet, sweet package. 

The Stats of these claws are as follows:

Non-Calcified - (1/4+/5/Paired) - Pickaxe, Katar

Calcified -  (1/4+/5+/Paired/Sharp) - Pickaxe, Katar

Both versions give you a reroll during the Mineral Gathering event and they are a non-Frail Pickaxe, which is important both when Mineral Gathering and when you are fighting the Dung Beetle Knight.  

If you do not have the Manhunter's Toolbelt then a set of Calcified Digging Claws is almost essential for taking on the Level 3 Dung Beetle Knight without getting seriously wrecked by Burrow.

These are easily the best Katars in the game right now, they hold almost everything you want from Katars, low speed, accuracy, power, utility, power and a decent affinity.  Plus they evolve into late game versions after Calcification.

4. Skleaver - Sunstalker 

The single best non-rare Grand Weapon in the game award goes to the Skleaver from the Sunstalker.  I absolutely love this weapon because it's so damn unique amongst the Grand Weapons currently out there.

The Skleaver is a (1/5+/10) Grand Weapon that gains Devastating 1 when you score a Perfect Hit and has a puzzle red, red, red activated ability that removes Heavy from the weapon (actually relevant).

So, what's so interesting about that, it's just a high strength weaker Zanbato that can be made to be not-heavy?  

Well, it's missing a keyword that every other Grand Weapon has.  It's not slow!  That's actually huge in the case of Grand Weapons, because Grand Weapon Specialisation and Mastery benefit from scoring multiple hits.  Normally you can only do that on Grand Weapons with the combination of Sweet Battle + Frenzy.  

Normally I don't recommend going for extra speed builds, but with the Skleaver I do. I absolutely do.

Items like Speed Powder (Barber Surgeon), Boss Mehndi (Stone Circle) and the Butcher's Blood (Lion God) become very powerful when they are combined with the Skleaver.

Removing Heavy from the Skleaver is also very relevant because it means you can avoid a bunch of nasty things happening to your survivor.  Most importantly of all?  Cracks in the Ground.

Oh, and I don't often mention this, but it's also a Bone Weapon if you are playing People of the Skull - and it's ridiculous in their hands.  As if People of the Skull wasn't ridiculous enough already.

About all the weapon is missing is Sharp, but if you go with Cycloid Armor (Sunstalker armor) you can even get that from the armor set.  

Also, it looks amazing.

3.  Ink Blood Bow - Sunstalker 

If it wasn't for one other bow, this item would be the number 2 item on this list.  In the hands of a bow master the Ink Blood Bow is the best Bow in the entire game, but when it is a non-Bow Master wielding the bow there is a better choice.

That disclaimer aside, the Ink Blood Bow is the pinnacle of what a bow should be in this game.  It is a (2/7+/8/Range 7, Deadly, Cumbersome) bow that has +1 Strength for each bleeding token you have.  In addition it loses cumbersome when in darkness (which has benefits vs the Sunstalker or if you build a party with Sunspot Lanterns).  

It's a solid, powerful weapon that plays well into the strengths of Bow Mastery and when combined with the Catgut Bow, Arc Bow and Sunshark Bow gives you a full progression range of different bows to use during your campaign.  

Thematically I think the Sunshark Bow is cooler, but the Ink Blood Bow is my choice for what a late game Bow should look like.

2.  Vespertine Bow – Flower Knight  

I honestly despise the Vespertine Bow, it's very existence in the game trivialises a whole category of weapons by invalidating all of the rest.  The Ink Blood Bow above is honestly a better weapon in the hands of a Bow Master, but it's so much harder to make.  The Flower Knight falls over itself in its rush to throw Vespertine Bows at your settlement - I've built 3 in Lantern Year 5 before (the campaign became easy mode very quickly, 1 tank plus 3 archers).

What makes the Vespertine Bow so powerful that it takes the number 2 spot on this list?  Just about everything about it, it can be used in two different firing modes depending on the situation.

Normal: (3/6+/6/Range 5/Deadly) 

Sniper: (1/1+/6/Range 9/Deadly)

On top of that it has a left facing blue affinity and a right facing green affinity. Meaning that it fits perfectly with a luck charm and Monster Grease.

It's pretty much the perfect bow and it is very hard to not want to keep using it over and over; especially when you consider that the rest of the Flower Knight's gear is either specialist (Satchels, Vespertine Cello), given to you for free (Flower Knight Badge), limited use (Vespertine Arrow) or just simply garbage (Vespertine Foil).  

The 'drawback' of the Vespertine Bow is the Necrotic Mistletoe event, which can kill up to five survivors.  However, first of all, survivors are a disposable resource, you can take Protect the Young plus Graves to soak this loss without even blinking.  But even if you are playing with Survival of the Fittest, the Flower Knight provides 'flower people' via one of its resources, you can farm a couple of Flower Knights easily to pay for the population loss.   On top of that, if you have the Sculpture innovation when Necrotic Mistletoe hits, you have a chance of gaining a survivor with the Acanthus Doctor Secret Fighting Art, which is one of the most broken and overpowered SFAs in the entire game.

Also I'm going on record stating that the 'nerf' people keep suggesting; which is to give the Vespertine Bow 'cumbersome' does not work at all, cumbersome is meaningless on a range 9 weapon.   The only nerf I've found that works is requiring a kill on an L3 Flower Knight before it can be crafted.  That means it turns up around LY12-16, where it has an appropriate level of power for the portion of the game you are in, but it is still better than both the Arc Bow and the Ink Blood Bow, which are harder to construct! 

Vespertine Bow turns the Death in Kingdom Death into Death for the monsters.

1. Blood Paint - Screaming Antelope aka 'Danger Deer'

Surprise, this gear card is why this list has been called 'Top Offensive Gear Items' and not weapons.  

Blood Paint takes the top slot because it is a game changing item that enables a different style of play.  It is a very simple item in design, that costs 1 Bladder (Plus the Paint innovation) from the Screaming Antelope, it sits between two one handed weapons and when you activate the Blood Paint you get to activate both one handed weapons one after another.

This means that you can attack with two weapons for one activation, basically a free surge.  You can also use Blood Paint to activate Block on Shields instead of attacking, allowing you to play a one handed tank/DPS hybrid also known as a 'Bruiser'.  Once you are playing this way there are a whole host of amazing tricks you can pull, including having Block up when you attack a monster so you can soak any attack reactions they might have, or swinging 4 times in a turn with Surge and decimating the monster you are attacking.

In addition, Blood Paint is so much better than paired because it splits your weapons across two attacks, this means that you have more options for flexibility and the reactions you face from the monster are split across two separate attacks, allowing for a lot of benefits that might not come to mind immediately.

The stupid 'second identical weapon in your grid' rule (really bad rule btw, awful one) means that you can't get the best effectiveness out of dual wielding identical one handed weapons, but you can wield two similar ones without any issues.

Blood Paint does a huge amount of things, it unlocks a whole pair of amazing play styles and it's the best thing for players who want to be methodical (Bruisers) and extravagant (DPS Speed Demons).

And that is why it is my top pick for an Offensive Gear Item Card and part of the reasons why I consider the Screaming Antelope to be the best core quarry in the game.