A Musical Society - The Strongest Innovation Tree? (Patreon)

Dance to the beat of your drum,  

To the beat of your drum,

to the beat of your drum,

to the beat of your heart 

MØ - Drum 

Recently I had an "unfortunate" pull from the Innovation deck where I had to choose between Hovel and Drums as my first pick.  Now I think at this point it's no secret that Symposium is the best innovation to pull early and Hovel is the worst - so the decision was very simple, I chose Drums and took this as an opportunity to explore the updates that this tree has received.  

Historically in 1.5 it has seemed that Poots's response to things which were perceived as weak in the original (1.31) release is to overbuff them to the point of ridiculousness - this list includes Survival of the Fittest, Screaming Armor, Romantic and for some reason absolutely nothing at all from The Phoenix (KDM's weakest monster).

The strength of Drums became apparent very quickly once I started using it.  Both Rhythm Chaser and Synchronised Strike are very powerful Fighting Arts once you have non-random access to them and you can build around them.  

Synchronized Strike is one of the few new Fighting Arts introduced in 1.5 and its design seems to be inspired by the Young Rivals Spidicules Story Event.  This fighting art is very powerful early on where +1 Accuracy and +1 Strength can have a huge impact on the ability of your DPS (Damage Per Swing) survivors.  It also plays nicely into the optimal positioning for many monsters - because monster facing doesn't matter you can have a tank in the front and be in the blind spot for a total of +2 Accuracy, +1 Strength.  Or you can have 2 DPS survivors standing on opposite flanks and spread out the bonuses.  This is very effective for melee based DPS hunt parties - which are my preferred hunt parties these days.

Now, there is a large question as to how this works with Spidicules however.  You figure that one out. However, this fighting art still remains relevant 

+1 Evasion, even if it is lost when you are knocked down, is an incredibly powerful ability.  In the early game this means that you can combine Survival of the Fittest (+1), Rawhide Vest (+1), Monster Grease (+1), Forbidden Dance (+1), Rhythm Chaser (+1) and Tall Grass (+2) for a total of +7 Evasion vs the White Lion - that's a monster which can only hit on 10s.  And this can be done in LY2 with ease and without buying anything out of the ordinary apart from Drums.  

Whoops.

So, there are drawbacks to this.  The first is that you cannot have any heavy gear in your grid - so no Bone Club or King's Spear, this does limit the types of tanks you can build, but it also makes the more marginal top light armor like Dragon Armor more desirable later on.  

Additionally, there is the issue that the +1 Evasion Token is temporary unless you have an instrument in your grid.  You can't really risk packing most instruments because the cost of The Harvester Event is just too high.  

However, our old friend The Gorm has a silent instrument.

And this is already one of my favourite support items because of the sheer power that this piece of gear gives.  So for the cost of 1 Heart and 3 Bone we have access to a permanent +1 Evasion Token and a powerful support ability that can really help out a hunt party.

This one is more balanced than Drums, however it is still absolutely amazing. First of all it buffs Synchronised Strike even further, making that Fighting Art even more powerful and allowing your DPS characters to have rerolls when attacking every single turn (with clever positioning).  

Now the once per lifetime roll is pretty risky, but in a settlement with Survival of the Fittest you can use rerolls when you are buffing your important survivors.  Also when you are training up new, replacement survivors you can try this and if you roll badly then you can drop that survivor into a high risk role like Scrap Gathering or Visiting the Lion Knight and get something back from them.

Also, gaining King's Step is not bad at all.

Not only does it give you a huge hand when facing the King's Man; but it also has the very powerful ability of letting you "mill" away an undesirable hit location in order to try and hit something better (at the risk of the Trap).

So what you do with a new survivor is first you roll on the Forbidden Dance to see what they get, if they get -1 Move then they are now a new 'Victor' (aka Janitors) and they get to do shitty rolls that might get them killed, if they get +1 Evasion they are a new Tank or Bruiser and should also get Rhythm Chaser and if they get King's Step then they should get Synchronised Strike and become a DPS hunter.

The passive bonus to Synchronised Strike on Heart Flute makes this one worth innovating even if you're not going to make use of the Devil's Melody to summon The Hand, The Butcher, Slenderman or Mr +8 Endeavors.  Changing a nasty (R) Reflex or (R) Wound to a (R) Failure is something that scales a huge amount when you start to face the bigger expansion monsters.

The buffs to both of these two innovations are really powerful, 

The Expansions also provide some incredible Innovations and I'll show them here.

Don't activate this one when you have Flower Resources, unless you really, really want that Sword Master.

Harvestman is one of the most powerful Fighting Arts in the game as it sets your movement to 8 and Death Touch will create an absolute beast of a Fist and Tooth woman.  Just don't risk a male survivor who matters here!

All in all, it seems that music based societies in Kingdom Death are absolute powerhouses and music now provides a way to smooth out your early game a HUGE amount.  The Music Tree holds a higher amount powerful Innovations that buff your survivors than any other tree in the game right now. So do not neglect it.

Until next time, perhaps you too should try innovating; the drums, the drums, the drums, the drums, the drums, the drums, the drums, the drums, the drums, the drums, the drums, the drums.