The classic success life cycle in Monster is Gear protects survivors who generate resources that makes gear. While in truth it is the gear that (mostly) generates the resources (and represents your 'character progression' through the campaign), sometimes the gear skips the survivors out of the process and goes for generating resources directly. Weapons do this via Critical Wounds & Deadly and Screaming Armor/Dancer Armor does this via the Screaming Bracers. While these are technically armor, the Screaming Bracers get an honorable mention on the list because of the sheer, ridiculous amount of resources that can be generated by them. Both through spawning additional acanthus and also giving you bonuses to generate resources via terrain.

However, I am not going to once again go through the why of how powerful this piece of gear is here, you can read about that here and there. The short version is, if you want to generate a huge pile of strange resources, dried acanthus & fresh acanthus plus protect your arms and have the ability to generate more resources from terrain like the Nightmare Tree, Obsidian Tower and so on. Use this.

Instead we'll look at the other pieces of gear, in this category, each one of which is capable of generating additional resources that you otherwise would not get access to. We're not including gear that is only +X to terrain roll here, because that's a huge category - just the items that create situations that spawn resources directly.

Bone Sickle - Bone Smith/Leather Worker

Crafting Cost: 1x bone, 1x leather

Additional Categories: "Weapon", Survival Gains

Affinities: Up Green is a slightly below average orientation.

Abilities & Keywords: tool and bone are positive keywords for this item because of interactions with the Tool Belt and People of the Skull/Bone Earrings. Frail sucks, but you should not be hitting things with this unless you are desperate. Its attack profile sucks.

Main Ability: Despite having a weapon profile, this one is mostly used for creating the Herb Gathering event. This event tends to generate acanthus, vermin and survival, but can potentially result in some very rare benefits, specifically 'eating the fruit' and gaining a permanent affinity in one of the three possible colours. It also has benefits when interacting with some terrain tiles, such as Acanthus. So it combos well with the Screaming Bracers.

Finally it ensures that flowers from the Flower Knight always yield resources (instead of 90%), so if you are farming old Lady Fairy Owl then the Sickle is a little better there, but it's not essential.

Rating: This is a solid addition for hunt parties that are moving beyond Overwhelming Darkness due to its ability to provide survival gains and acanthus (which can be used to heal damaged locations). It is also one of the few places where you can gain permanent speed in a repeated fashion (as long are you are insane and roll well). However, nothing it does here is unique or essential and as a consquence, the sickle is good, but many parties will do fine without it. A+

Bone Pickaxe - Bone Smith/Leather Worker

Crafting Cost: 1x bone, 1x leather

Additional Categories: "Weapon", Insanity gains (Defense)

Affinities: Same as the Sickle above.

Abilities & Keywords: Same as the Sickle, however I would like to say that I much prefer the weapon statline of the Pickaxe over the Sickle, it results in a superior weapon when compared to the sickle. Also being a Pickaxe gives it combat advantages over the Dung Beetle Knight, which is not something the Sickle enjoys.

Main Ability: Spawning Mineral Gathering is a massively important step for almost all settlements. Eventually, no matter who you are, you are going to want to move onto Iron based items at some point, be it for the offensive weapons, the beacon shields, dragon armor or perhaps even phoenix armor. Iron is the third tier of gear technology (bone/rawhide being the first and leather/scrap being the second) and the Pickaxe is the most effective way to generate more of it. It is worth paying attention to the fact that the table is very cruel and tends to break pickaxes.

Also, this is the only way you will get your hands on Crystal Skin (Post Overwhelming Darkness) and that is worth the price of admission alone because it can be bred across your survivors. Finally on the showdown board, this can become a very effective weapon when combined with the tool belt and it has bonuses when dealing with terrain that can be mined. Note that it has NO benefits vs. Obsidian Towers, you need Clubs/Heavy weapons for those.

Rating: S+ Tier. Get these early and keep using them till they break.

Sky Hook & Lure - Sunstalker

I have written about this in the past in considerable detail, so I would direct you to read that article for most of the information on why it's really good. I'm going to be light on details here to reflect on that.

Crafting Cost: 1x sunshark blubber, 1x scrap

Additional Categories: Survival Gains, Misc

Affinities: Down blue which is just one of those fine but nothing to get too excited about affinities, mostly because of the sheer amount of head armor that has the same slot.

Abilities & Keywords: tool doesn't do anything at this point in the game because the only interaction we have with tools is via ones with weapon profiles. So the main thing to take away from this is it doesn't have any keywords that will cause it to get archived.

Main Ability: You can check out the article above for everything it does. Sky Fishing is a really good event that generates resources and eventually leads to an innovation that produces resources constantly. It's good.

Rating: Just like the two before it, the lure is an excellent piece of equipment that helps any settlement that has it. However it has a dependency on the Sky Harpoon and while that is an amazing weapon in itself, you might not be using it. This, plus the fact that it doesn't interact with the Manhunter's Tool Belt holds the lure behind the others. A-

Scavenger Kit - Barber Surgeon/Screaming Antelope

Crafting Cost: 1x scrap, 1x pelt

Additional Categories: N/A

Affinities: A good Down Green which is worth more than the Down Blue of the lure above because of the ever present leather shield.

Abilities & Keywords: As always heavy is an issue, not just because of negative interactions, but because of the rules ambiguity around worn vs. carried that utterly soaks the heavy keyword. As a bag it's even harder to tell if this one is worn or carried - at this stage I wish only the word 'equipped' was used in the game, it would be cleaner.

Unique is a shame on this one, but you can understand why it has that ability.

Main Ability: You don't want that basic resource, no-one wants that basic resource, not when there is the amazing option to get a monster resource on winning. While you will not have this one before you are onto L2s (which means that the proportional value of this reward is lower), the absolute value of it is still big.

As a side note, this has anti-synergy with the Debris pile unless you REALLY want Scrap swords.

Rating: S Tier, no hesitation. There is nothing else in the game that works as well as this does. However, it is quite a mission to get this one, you need to get Pottery innovated, not have the King's Man kick it to pieces and then beat an L2 Antelope. Usually the hard part is innovating Pottery as it's not really as potent as many other options without the Barber Surgeon. Also this link between the Barber Surgeon and the Antelope means that you literally cannot get this without hunting the old danger deer.

Bug Trap - Barber Surgeon/Screaming Antelope

Crafting Cost: 1x muscly gums, 2x bone

Additional Categories: N/A

Affinities: N/A

Abilities & Keywords: Soluble is something that can get destroyed so this is a negative keyword.

Main Ability: 80% of the time you get a bug patch on the board (if there isn't one already as there can only be one unless you are TWIST Gaming), this bug patch generates a basic resource 10% of the time and a vermin resource 70% of the time. (And it can take multiple tries, because 20% of the time you get nothing and have to try again). This works out at 80% of 70% for a Vermin Resource and 80% of 10% for a Basic resource.

That's a 56% chance of getting a Vermin and an 8% chance of getting a Basic Resource, for a total chance of 64% on if you want it first try. (Overall the odds will climb up to 80% in a 70/10 split, because as long as you keep trying you will eventually get something from the Bug Patch). So this represents a pretty poor investment. Would you want something if 1 in 5 showdowns it does nothing at all?

Rating: This one has the same crafting limitations as the Scavenger Kit, which removes it from non-antelope games (Spidicules, potentially future campaigns). However, even if you do have access to this one, the 20% chance to do absolutely nothing at all is a massive drawback for an item that has no affinities. I do not think that the chance to get a vermin resource is worth the slot here. Because the Bug Patch itself doesn't always spawn vermin resources having a chance of the Trap not spawning a resource as well just plummets the odds to an unacceptable level. This one should either automatically work, or have some affinities to aid other gear.

Gather your roses

And there we have it, most of these items are very strong and should be high on your shopping list. Only the Bug Patch is particularly weak and if you want Vermin for cooking/evasion abuse you are better off using a Sickle. Also the Sky Hook falls off in value once you have the Filleting Table. All of these items are low in resource costs to manufacture, but they require multiple steps to get them online.

So next time, don't forget, rush Pickaxes, Rush Iron, Spam Bugs and Rush B!