Sculpting the Landscape: Terrain (1 of 2) (Patreon)

It's been a while since this one was requested, but terrain is one of the hardest things in the game to write strategy articles about in detail because it all varies a great deal depending on the monster, the monster's level, the terrain and your survivor loadouts.  Considering a lot of the terrain you have control over is just assigned randomly rather than fixed/pseudo-random it is surprising just how important it can be.

Terrain lands into a few different 'buckets' in respect of what it is, so I'll list them first.

This is a part of the Seasoned Hunter strategy series.

Defensive

Defensive terrain blocks the monster's line of sight, movement (rarely), provides evasion gains or similar.  Simply, there are scenarios where this type of terrain can be used to avoid taking damage for at least one survivor.

Offensive

Rarely found, offensive terrain provides a boost to a survivor's offensive capabilities. One way or another, offensive terrain allows you to be more effective in hurting the monster.

Resource

These are the most exciting of all the terrain types, one way or another these give you access to resources or gear.

Harmful

Harmful terrain is the kind of terrain that needs to be avoided. It's existence makes the fight harder, so you generally want to be holding the fight in an area away from it.

Some terrain sits in multiple buckets, but we'll worry about that when we encounter them.

Acanthus Plants

Resource, Screaming Antelope, Screaming Armor

In addition to being intrinsically linked to the Screaming Antelope, Acanthus Plants are unique in being one of the few terrain types which can be added into play by survivors in a repeatable fashion.  Acanthus Plants have essentially two uses, they should be harvested as soon as  possible in order to gain access to their in fight benefits of healing when fighting anything other than the Screaming Antelope.

Vs. The Screaming Antelope you should leave it down in order to farm the monster, this is something I've talked about before and I can write about it again if people are interested.

Bug Patch

Resource, Harmful, Dung Beetle Knight, Bug Trap

One of the few ways to gain cooking resources outside of herb gathering, this terrain can be useful, but it can also be a crippling issue if you have the Dung Beetle Knight expansion. The disorder Vermin Obsession dooms you, which means that your survivor will not be able to do anything at all until someone else gets rid of the bug patch. 

The largest point where this becomes an issue is when you are farming via the DBK innovations (I've written about this in two articles previously, here and here), because it will get a lot of survivors afflicted with the disorder and then they can't go out and face the DBK.

Finally, the Bug Patch is one of the few terrain types that can be 'summoned' via gear and that is something you might want to be doing if you are abusing cooking for the +1 evasion (which you should be, cause it's amazing).

Debris

Resource

Drawn early in a campaign, this is a source of free weapons, especially if you get the Scrap Sword because bone swords become redundant fairly quickly.  In the late campaign you want the Basic Resource result and that's where I find this terrain a bit badly balanced.  Because there is no reason to ever use a scavenger kit - once you have the barber surgeon location, you're already going to be past the level of the Scrap Sword.

Decent terrain, badly balanced and a classic typo.

Dead Monster

Resource, Offensive

Not only does Dead Monster give you resources from whatever deck you want (the DBK deck is one of the best to draw from if you have the choice, otherwise it should be either the monster you are fighting or the Phoenix/Sunstalker/Dragon King), but it gives you a huge tactical advantage because you can deploy your survivors wherever you wish. 

This allows you to have a first turn where the monster targets only your tank, or does nothing but advance harmlessly or trigger its instinct.  The effect of the Dead Monster is over once you've set up, but getting the drop on many monsters is huge. For example, against the Dung Beetle Knight you can set everyone up far away from the DBK, so when it throws the ball in the first turn it will not hit any of your survivors (that's normally one of the most dangerous turns in the DBK fight).

There are a huge number of applications, and they vary from one showdown to the next, but most of the time, you use this terrain to position in an way that is hugely advantageous for your survivors.

Egg Sacs

Resource, Harmful, Spidicules

These are always worth popping because the Silk is very valuable, even if you're not going to be able to use it as it is intended with the Silk Mill because Spidicules is not in the campaign.  This is because there are plenty of things that use either generic 'resource' as part of their crafting recipes or require strange resources.

The spiderling that pops out is an annoyance, so the main way to play this is to make sure that you have a second survivor able to kill the spiderling straight away.

Flower Patches

Resource, Offensive, Harmful, Flower Knight

Flower Patches are easily one of the best terrain to draw in the entire game. Not only do they provide a resource, but they also give your survivor a luck token 90% of the time (100% with a sickle). This means that Flower Patches should be collected by the survivors with the most deadly weapons so you can stack luck onto them.

If you cannot manage to use the flower you get in time, you can convert it into a storable resource via the Stone Circle Harvest Ritual.

Giant Stone Face

Offensive, Defensive, Strategist

The Giant Stone Face is probably one of the signature benefits of Protect the Young. Having a Strategist Baby for your first child gives you an incredibly powerful ranged attacker because they turn up with a Giant Stone Face every fight.  This gives them extra range plus extra accuracy and can essentially turn even Bone Darts into a deadly sniper style weapon.

As you can now "sculpture" Strategist, you can ensure that the Giant Stone Faces are a permanent part of your hunt strategy if you are patient (keep the Strategist baby safe in your settlement until you have the sculpture to record it).

Lava Pool

Harmful, Dragon King

I consider this terrain to be 'avoid avoid avoid' there is little benefit from it, gaining +1 courage 40% of the time isn't worth the risk of 5 damage.

Basically, put it somewhere you're not going to fight around and avoid being knocked back over it.  Maybe, at the end of the fight, if you have a lot of armor left, you can try and hop over it for the courage.

Lion Statue

Defensive, Lion God ("Resource")

Pretty much just something to hide behind in most situations.  This has some relevance when you are fighting the Lion God.  You should ALWAYS activate a Lion Statue before you interact with the Sinkhole during that fight. It's also OK in a few other rare situations where you get story events during the fight, such as L2+ Spidicules, Flower Knights, Dragon Kings and the L3 Gorm.

Apart from that, this is a decent thing to hide behind for your support character.

See the Sinkhole next time for more details on this.

Nightmare Tree

Defensive, Resource, Phoenix

50% of the time you are going to get a broken lantern from this. Therefore every survivor should search the tree until you've gotten both broken lanterns and hopefully the Lonely Ant.

The ant is not a particularly useful resource, it doesn't do much of use when eaten and it's not used in any cooking recipes, but you can trade it in very nicely at a range of places. Or if you collect enough you can Harvest Ritual them into basic resources (just like the flowers above!)

Obsidian Tower

Defensive, Resource, Dragon King

These beauties are one of the main goals of the Dragon King fight, I'll write about that in detail in the future. But until then, the main joy of these is that they include a lot of Iron. 

Their existence in fights is a prime reason why every hunt party should have a club or a heavy weapon all of the time.  Rolling 2d10 and potentially getting +1 Strength and an Iron is really powerful.

That's the first half of these terrain pieces covered, the second half will be same time next week! I wanted to do it in one, but as you can see, it's a lot of writing to cover everything!