The Educated Hunter: Lion God - The Showdown (Patreon)

This model above is available as a 'pre-painted commission' and I am accepting offers on it of a sufficient amount, but they must include an unpainted (preferably unassembled) version of the model to replace the one I have.

In this article we will take a deep dive into the Lion God's showdown, when finished you will have a full understanding of its active and reactive behavior along with its strengths and weaknesses. You will also have a better understanding of the monster's power spikes and troughs, which will allow you to mitigate the worst situations and exploit the openings that the AI provides.

This piece will be broken into multiple sections, they are as follows:

Rewards - Discussion on what the carrot for the monster is, why would you hunt this in the first place? This matters because one should know what you are aiming for in a hunt.

Stats - a look at the baseline statistics for each level of the monster.

Traits - a breakdown and discussion of each important trait the monster has

AI - a look at the monster's general AI behavior aka Active behavior

HL - a look a the monster's general HL reaction/trap behavior aka Reactive behavior

Power Spikes - Any individual cards that are way more dangerous than normal

Troughs - Any specific cards that create moments where the monster is weaker, or provide opportunities to exploit

Finally we will close out with some discussion that will put a bow on things and give you food for thought on how to approach hunting this monster with an aim for success.

Rewards

We will be listing the rewards based on the lowest level one can get them from, note that if the reward is in bold then it is specific to that level only. We will discuss these rewards in more detail next time. 

Critical Hit Rewards: Spend 4 survival to gain +1 strength, +1d5 survival. Others are temporary buffs for survivors and temporary debuffs to the Lion God. You cannot get resources from critical wounds.

Note that each level has a separate Ventilation Shaft set of resources, I'll discuss this further next time as it's a detailed event and best left linked to the gear discussion.

Any Level On victory: if settlement does not have Knowledge Worm or Necromancer, gain the Knowledge Worm innovation.

Level 1: Necromancer's Eye, 8 Basic Resources, 1 Iron

Ventilation Shaft: Ancient Lion Claw & Lantern Mehndi, Glyph of Solitude

Level 2: Golden Plate, 10 basic resources, 2 iron

Ventilation Shaft: Ancient Lion Claw & Lantern Mehndi, Glyph of Solitude, Butcher's Blood, Bone Witch Mehndi

Level 3:Lion God Statue, 12 basic resources, 3 iron

Ventilation Shaft: Ancient Lion Claw & Lantern Mehndi, Glyph of Solitude, Butcher's Blood, Bone Witch Mehndi, Death Mehndi

As mentioned above, I'll discuss these in more detail next time, but the short version here is the best rewards are with the L1 and L2 (in that order). The L3 rewards are very poor for the level of challenge the monster represents (it's a disproportionate stick to carrot ratio).

Stats

The Lion God's movement ranges from 8 to 9 to 10. This means that the monster remains an eminently "kiteable" one and you can Dash-Cancel a lot of its attacks with a Harvestman  survivor, however because of the Relentless trait (see below) this method is not infallible, sometimes that survivor will be caught and attacked regardless.

Its toughness goes 14/16/21; this means that you are looking for baseline total strength of 9-10 at a minimum vs the L1, 11-12 vs the L2 and a whopping 16+ for the L3. As always, the more strength you have the better and the Black Sword in the hands of a Master/Vagabond Armor is a 2+ to wound regardless of which version of the Lion God you face.

The Lion God is a little unusual in that it gains +1 Luck at L2 and +2 Luck at L3. This means that critical wound builds drop in effectiveness more sharply than strength base builds. Because Luck is so hard to stack beyond +3, 2 points of monster's luck removes 2/3rds of your crit wounding potential before you even get in and even at L2 you need deadly weapons to just keep pace with the monster's Luck gain.

Because of these two factors in combination (high strength , reduced crit ranges) the Red Charm climbs more in strength and power vs. the Lion God than it does against many other monsters. In combination with the right weapon it can form a huge part of your strategy.

The Lion God's speed and damage gains are +1/+1 at L2 and +2/+3 at L3. These numbers are less impactful than they would be on other monsters because its baseline speed and damage are much higher. 

When attacking the Lion God has on average the following stats: (L1/L2/L3)

Speed: 2.81/3.81/4.81

Damage: 5.46/6.46/8.46

These numbers do not represent the overall damage the Lion God can deal, they exist only to give you an idea of the scaling. I am using approximate values here because it would take complex programming calculations to work out everything in full. Monsters in Kingdom Death are highly variable because of the permutations, not only do you have random AI cards inserted into the deck, but these cards are in a randomized order and players eliminate some of them via wounds.

These caveats aside L3 Lion God has approximately 70% more speed than the L1 version and it deals 55% more damage. It also gains +1 evasion at L3, but that is a minor defensive buff that essentially cancels out the blind spot bonus (except for many archer strats).

The wound totals for each level are as follows:

Level 1: 16

Level 2: 21

Level 3: 26

This is an increase in sustainability for the Lion God of 31.25% from L1 to L2 and 23.8% from L2 to L3. If you're curious, the Lion God has 62.5% more wounds at L3 than it does at L1. Final note: The Lion God always has at least 1 legendary card in its deck and gains its second one at L3.

Traits

Traits can define strongly the personality and behavior of a monster almost as much as the AL or HL does. The 'always on' traits that matter for understanding how the Lion God works are; Whiplash, Hollow Earth, Heft, Divine Prowess, Immaculate Intuition, Grab and the "hidden one" Relentless.

Whiplash: inflicts bleeding tokens on anyone who attacks within "Zone 3" of the monster with the exception of the Blind Spot. 1 bleeding token for attacking normally, 2 if you are surging. It represents the Lion God's chin penis (yeah it's a lion penis) slashing about in that area and provides the first of its reaction based defenses. The Lion God has 3 spaces in the blind spot so in truth this trait should not be a major issue, but pack one set of bandages as well. Note that it triggers on attacks, other activations and non-attacking based wound methods do not trigger this.

Hollow Earth: will mostly be explored next time (haha!) the main thing to watch out for here is that the first time an impassable terrain is archived (except via heft) it will create the sinkhole terrain. If this terrain is spawned under a survivor, they're going to have to dive into it on their next turn and then die (a survivor who ends their movement on the sinkhole dies, a survivor cannot voluntarily move through it, so RIP unless you have ways of getting out that don't require movement). Players are in control of the final position of the Sinkhole, so you will rarely fall in it unless you are standing on the terrain when it is archived (careful with the Giant faces until the Sinkhole is revealed).

Heft: Basically when cards instruct the Lion God to heft it will move towards an impassable terrain tile and start wielding it (it will basic action if there is nothing to heft in reach). This is one which doesn't do much in itself, but it has combinations with the AI cards.

Divine Prowess: The most often misunderstood of all the traits. This one gives ALL the AI cards the Relentless trait tag. This means that (most of the time) when the Lion God draws a basic AI it will always draw at least one more card. Note that Relentless does nothing by itself, you have to have the flow step that triggers it on the previous card. This means that Advanced and Legendary cards represent a 'stop' in the Monster's turn.

Immaculate Intuition: This trait turns up on the L3 Lion God only and it is one of the weaker traits. It partially disables items like the Fecal Salve and Poop Boots (Cycloid Scale Boots), but they can still work by either staying behind obstacle terrain or in the blind spot. The main thing it does here is stop an archer from attacking then smearing poop on themselves to avoid retaliation. There are other things that it will impact, such as knocked down survivors but the Lion God (as you will see below) doesn't rely on threat based targeting as much as the White and Giga Lions do.

Grab: Just like its smaller brethren, the Lion God will grab at times. This works the same as the White Lion's mechanic.

Relentless: A red bar on the top of the AI cards where Mood or Trait is normally located. This bar does NOTHING by itself, but most Basic AI cards will ask you to reveal the next AI card and if it has this relentless bar, you play it. This is one of those mechanics people get wrong more often, along with Separation Anxiety, Diabolical, Meltdown, Spiral Age and the Sun track. It's a lot to remember, especially when there is a great deal of chaos going on and that's why I prefer to play the support survivor when playing with others. I don't have to concentrate on attacking then.

Active Behavior (AI)

Mourn: When their are no targets the Lion God will move towards the nearest impassable terrain tile and smash it, dealing ★+1 brain damage to all non-deaf survivors. If there are no impassable terrain tiles left, it will gain +1 damage token.

This is a pretty low threat level basic action, because the Lion God (typically) isn't very capable of beating evasion, so you can often not worry too much about it doing all this as long as you have the insanity (or earplugs/deafness) to avoid it.

Basic Behavior

The basic cards break down as follows:

3x Intimidates (2 AOI, 1 single target)

3x Heft actions (2 throwing, 1 shattering it for massive AOI damage)

7x Move and Attack Target AI cards

1x Earthquake (see power spikes below)

Apart from Intimidates, the targeting breakdown is:

2x Furthest Survivor

5x Closest Survivor made up of

3x in field of view, in range 

2x in field of view,  

4x Closest threat: made up of

2x in field of view, in range

2x in field of view

When it does target a specific location it is body or head, it rarely inflicts bleed, but often inflicts bash or knockback 7. These cards all have relentless.

The Advanced AI breaks down as follows

3x Heft related actions breaking down into 2x attacks with it and 1x AOE damaging effect

2x Ragdoll (see power spikes)

4x Moods which buff its damage/bleed it's accuracy (see power spikes) or cause it to "Ground Fight" see troughs.

 These cards do not have relentless without Divine Prowess. On the whole the Advanced AI cards have less attacks, but they do a lot of very threatening things. Additional effects again include bash, bleed and Knockback 7 or 10. 

Legendary AI

Just two cards here, Feral Tyrant and Woeful Majesty. 

Feral Tyrant hits the closest survivor, in facing, in field of view or closest survivor in field of view. It is a low speed (Base 1) attack that deals 15 damage and impales the survivor, removing them from the board the way that the DBK/DK Trap or Puppet AI card do. It also inflicts the doomed status before the flow step and strips all insanity. If the last survivor is impaled with no other survivors on the showdown board, it's a defeat.  Also, once you are impaled you will suffer a bleeding token each time the Lion God moves. You're released when it is wounded.  

Woeful Majesty is an odd one, it essentially pushes everyone (and we do mean everyone) down to an almost dead state once you have made it through the AI deck once. The Lion God will have X+1 Wounds (X AI cards) left where X is the number of remaining survivors and all the survivors will have no armor,no survival, no insanity, no tokens and 4 bleeding tokens. Plus all remaining terrain will be archived.

It's absolutely galling if this card hits when the Survivors are doing well, but it offers even the weakest team a shot at winning. The Lion God is almost dead, you need to score 1 wound for each survivor + 1 extra in order to score a kill. 

There are things which help, being in the Blind Spot when this triggers gives you opportunities to burst it to death with Devastating weapons and things which trigger on zero survival, such as the Scarab Circlet (DBK) or Burning Focus, anti-bleeding mechanics (Bandages, Unconcious Fighter etc).

Reactive Behavior (HL)

Your basic breakdown of the Lion God's Hit Location cards are as follows:

20 Total cards

3 First Strike

1 Impervious

5 Super Dense

12 Others

1 Trap

As you can see the Lion God has a lot more First Strike and Super Dense locations than most, one does not recommend a Zanbato against this monster at all. Get it calcificed if you are going to do that.

Of the non-Trap cards the reactions break down like this:

8 Wound

4 Failure

4 Reflex 

1 Automatic

1 Automatic + Wound

1 Automatic + Reflex

The Wound Reflexes are exceptionally punishing, including Grab, dismemberment of an arm (unless you have range/reach or are using a spear), being thrown away, being thrown into terrain, bash, brain damage, bleeding tokens, -accuracy tokens and even inflicting Frenzy directly. 

The Reaction package for the Lion God is extremely punishing, it is capable of dealing out a massive amount of damage and harm via reactions alone, which is why weapons that are capable of ignoring the reactions, either via Critical Wounds or Reaction Cancelling (Grand Weapons sometimes, Katar Specialists always) or very long range weapons like the Arc Bow are the only real choice for survivors looking to mitigate as much of the reactive damage as possible. You are REALLY hurt for hitting the Lion God.

Speaking of Critical Wounds, we'll take a look at the crit situation now, as mentioned before you cannot get resources from the Lion God via crits, but you do get to ignore reactions when you hit the right location.

A total of 14 of the 19 woundable locations have critical wound slots, there is (thankfully) only one Persistent Injury, so Axe Mastery doesn't apply much here and also your Axe Master can't go increasing the occurrence of the trap + other more deadly hit locations. The Persistent Injury is also rather weak, it's a 40% chance of an additional wound when the Lion God hefts. It's fine if you hit it, but it's not going to win any prizes.

Persistent Injuries are often a double edged sword, they represent a single possible critical wound from that hit location rather than the potential to score multiple ones. Many Axe adherents will cling to the mantra that "Axe Mastery is great", but in truth it's middling to above average and very monster dependent. Some monsters are crippled by their persistent injuries, but the Lion God is not one of them.

The normal Critical Wounds however, they are absolutely crippling for the Lion God if you set them up right, because of its petrified nature it is very vulnerable to suffering damage that causes permanent stat decreases on criticals. You can reduce its movement, toughness, speed and damage from most of that type of critical. 

The final buckets of criticals are include a few boosts for the survivors and some in fight benefits with knockdown or knockback plus an extra wound.

In short, the Lion God is very vulnerable to criticals, and if you are able to do this consistently despite its increasing luck tokens, then you have a reliable route to killing the monster without suffering reaction damage (which is always a goal).

Of course, bypassing the Hit Location deck entirely via the Red Ring or the Counterweighted Axe Perfect hit builds is going to be extremely effective here. But those two builds always are.

Finally we have the trap, it is a very nasty one which has the Lion God full moving towards the attacker (all survivors are doomed), then all survivors adjacent to the Lion God suffer bash. The attacker suffers  ★ +5 Damage to 2 random hit locations and Knockback 10. If you have been foolish enough to ignore the 'no heavy armor' advice then you suffer Knockback 20. If you collide with impassable terrain it gets archived on the hit (possibly creating the sinkhole) and if you hit a board edge you either suffer 10 brain damage or you die.

Yeah it's a doozy and not something you want to hit by accident because if you are badly positioned it can be very fatal. However, like all traps it can be defeated by a trapper cancelling the trap. 

Power Spikes

Earthquake - So this card can honestly go fuck itself. It is a death sentence with no counter play unless somehow you can Dash to a position where the Lion God cannot manage to get its seismic zone on the target. This one involves a LOT of time spent trying to figure out where to position the survivor so that the Lion God ends up on a corner adjacent to them and unable to Sesimic it.

I do like cards that reward good positional play and space perfect dashing, but this is one of the first times that a card like this will turn up and the punishment for failing is automatic death. Honestly it feels like it needed a flow step after the full move but before the seismic zone, but it doesn't have that so this card will RIP many survivors unless you are very cautious. It's absolutely work AI controlling at the end of every turn until you are sure this card is stripped away.

Trumpeting Wail - This is an obnoxious direct intimidate action, now you can avoid it by having no threats in field of view every turn, or by having the target wear an active Gorment Mask. But if you cannot manage either of those you're going to end up with a deaf survivor with no head armor at a minimum. It's brutal.

Engorge - Unlike many quarry monsters, you do not want the Lion God healing if you can avoid it. Engorge heals by removing bleeding tokens from the target. This can be handled by either avoiding bleeding through good positional play or removing bleeding with bandages/blood skin. Sadly the new Hours Ring doesn't stop bleeding tokens being gained (as the old one did) so we lost that strategy.

Feral Tyrant - We discussed this one above, it's scary because it removes one of the survivors from the board, reducing your overall actions. So wound the Lion God asap (if they survive the initial attack, which typically causes at least one severe injury when you're against the L2 or L3).

Embrace the Eons - The Lion God gets to ignore all your evasion and hit on a 2+ always, this is very bad. Fortunately this one is a mood, so you can get rid of it, either with the (risky) Whisker Harp, a Whip (Silk Whip on a Cycloid Scale Survivor is the best choice here). The Lion God's speed is so high that no tank can withstand it hitting on a 2+. Try to avoid this card at all costs, another huge reminder that AI control before the Lion God's turn (until you know what AI cards it has) is very important.

Rag Doll - Important to highlight this one as there are two copies of it in the AI deck and it hits a survivor in the Blind Spot (and is the only card that does so). It also deals 5 damage directly (no Dodge allowed) for each terrain tile within 2 spaces of the monster as the survivor is tossed into them before being thrown away. It is absolutely brutal early on, but becomes weaker as the terrain on the board gets archived.

Troughs

Challenge - This is the "Ground Fighting" of the showdown. The Lion God will sit in the middle of the board with the trap on top of its deck and do nothing until it is wounded. If this hits with the Sinkhole on the board then you have time to go look at the statues, read the hieroglyphs, plunder the Necropolis with each survivor and then all get into position to handle the trap then slap the Lion God around. You can get rid of the trap via the Crest Crown (Phoenix), Blue Charm, Spear or just sucking up the hit by making sure that you're knocked back into terrain/not off the board edge. Overall, while this one isn't easy to deal with, it does provide you with the best opportunity to get as much from the Necropolis as possible (as long as it has been revealed).

Woeful Majesty - discussed above.

Summary

One thing you may have noticed here is that the Lion God is rinsed hard by anything that cancels reactions and evasion (except for Embrace the Eons), it also has no strong anti-Block/Deflect mechanics. So having a powerful tank or someone who can kite well is very effective.

The lower level Lion Gods also struggle against ranged attackers who can 'hide' by becoming non-threats, which makes the Fecal Salve very effective if you are willing to surge spam it after attacking. However, be careful and avoid the giant stone faces until after the Sinkhole has been spawned. The trap can either be damage sunk by positioning a survivor to suck up the hit, or disarmed by a trapper - the Crest Crown in combination with a circlet/trash crown is ideal for this.

One of the strongest attackers for the Lion God is a survivor with a 1 speed Katar (Digging Claw, Shadow Saliva Shawl + whatever), Katar Spec and a Red Charm. Katar spec cancels the reactions that make such a strong part of the Lion God's kit, and the Red Charm ignores the monster's toughness. If you combine this with blood paint (difficult to get everything online, but possible) then you can have a 50% chance of scoring 1 wound per turn and a 25% chance of getting 2. Because they can stay in the blind spot the entire time they avoid the effects of Whiplash and gradually grind away the Lion God's wound total with relative safety (as safe as you can be).

As for armor, it is best to avoid heavy armor through these fights, which means that Dragon Armor is one of the choices that tops the roster, (it also has a way of getting out of the Sinkhole with leap if you get slapped into it). But Rolling Armor is also very strong and easier to use, because while it is heavy, it is NOT an armor. So it dodges the worst effect of the trap and also presents damage cancelling abilities - watch out for its set bonus though, that can cause you to get thrown further than you would expect.

The rest, well you learn it while playing against the Lion God, it takes a lot of practice to get used to the fight and a great deal is dependent on what survivors/gear you have. I honestly recommend that you take snapshots of good hunt teams you have and go play them against the various Lion Gods in one shot scenarios, because this is one where playing the fight over and over is the only way to really 'git gud' due to how important positioning can be and that's not something that can be taught easily, the principles of good positioning are easy to list, but the permutations and situations are so many that it takes practice to get there.

If you really are struggling, try practicing with the AI deck face up (same as surging with Rawhide headband at the end of the survivors turn), when you learn how to handle each card by positioning, then you'll be a lot closer towards dealing with it blind.