Endeavoring for Success: Gorm Innovations (Patreon)

As we looked at the Gorm in some detail on Monday, I figured that we could make the first week of February an unofficial "Gorm Week" and round it out with a look at the Gorm endeavors.

The Gorm innovations tend to be a somewhat overlooked portion of the expansion as they are mostly used for their more powerful 'passive' benefits. Now these absolutely cannot be underestimated, so they should be listed and acknowledged before we dive into the endeavor actions:

They are a chain of innovations that can be removed from the Innovation deck not only through the traditional method, but also via a Gormchymist special Endeavor.

They speed the settlement towards the 5 innovation trigger to bring the Hooded Knight / Edged Tonometry event up earlier than normal.

Nigredo is free and has +1 Survival Limit

Citrinitas also has +1 Survival Limit

These innovations are used to craft Green Armor parts

These innovations increase the number of dice rolled when crafting at the Gormchymist

So they provide a lot of bonuses and benefits outside of just the endeavors printed on them, more so than many other innovations entirely. This makes them a very unique and powerful set of innovations (and that's why the advice is to always spend Gorm brains crafting these when you get that resource).

Now it's time to take a look at the actual endeavor actions, each one of these is based mechanically and thematically on a bunch of alchemical principles. However, just like the tropes of alchemy, each endeavor is random and can be both negative or positive. They can also be highly situational / hard to utilize and it is fair to say that due to the random nature of these potions, their activation costs are not very well balanced.

Nigredo

Cost: 1x endeavor

Type: Permanent, Random

Effect(s): Either lose 1x bone or turn 3x bone into 1x dense bone

So, this one is very nearly a good endeavor, and situationally it can be very useful. The ability to turn generic bones into a monster specific bone, should not be overlooked - especially given that this bone, the Dense Bone is used to build the Greater Gaxe. 

But, unfortunately that is about all this is good for, if you're struggling to get a decent early to mid game weapon you can gamble on turning 3 bones (generic bones are the lowest value resource in the game) into half of a good weapon. Technically if you have a stout hide kicking around instead of a jiggling lard, you could make a Gaxe rather than a Greater Gaxe, but it is an inferior weapon overall.

And that is absolutely the limit of what this endeavor is used for at the moment. Dense Bones have no use anywhere else, not even in Green Knight Armor. So that is a very situational, low value endeavor that is always a net resource loss. 

Still, for a free endeavor (gained by killing a single Gorm for the first time) you cannot complain about it because it's bundled with +1 Survival Limit.

Rating: 3/5

Albedo

Cost: 2x endeavor

Type: Permanent, Random

Effect(s): 20% remove 1 level of weapon proficiency from all returning survivors, 70% convert 4x organs into 1x Gorm Brain, 10% all returning survivors can make one negative attribute into 0.

Ok, so unlike Nigredo, Albedo is a pretty sweet deal overall, you just have to plan for it in advance. This endeavor is not a cheap one to activate, but if you have survivors that are below Age 2 when they return (therefore they do not have ranks in weapon proficiency) there is no punishment for rolling low. 

The main goal with this endeavor is to allow you to rush Gorm Brains in order to get Citrinitas and Rubedo innovated as fast as possible and it is very well weighted towards doing that, especially for a settlement with Otherworldly Luck and Survival of the Fittest.

The 10+ result is a bit hard to plan around, but it is a nice bonus that can undo the stat penalty caused by an injury and even become a stat bonus if that injury is later healed elsewhere.

Rating: 4/5

Citrinitas

Cost: 3x endeavors.

Type: Permanent, Random

Effect(s): 20% all returning survivors lose -1 permanent evasion, 80% returning survivors may remove 1 broken severe injury.

There are some broken injuries that cannot be removed anywhere, except by Citrinitas. So that alone makes this endeavor a very potent and useful one. While the cost of 3x endeavors is very high, if you take out multiple broken survivors on a soft hunt then you can be very efficient. Fixing 4x broken injuries for example is well worth 3x endeavors. 

However, the downside on this one is pretty severe, there is only a small number of playstyles that can handle losing evasion and as such you do not want to be activating this one without a reroll backup plan and preferably also having Otherworldly Luck. 

Still, this is something that you can set up for the year before, or even set up for with a special showdown, and it's a huge benefit when angled correctly.  For example, if you have a survivor with a broken rib, you could remove the -1 speed via Albedo and then fix the Broken Rib, which would then undo the injury and effectively give you +1 speed. This can likewise be achieved with Broken Legs & Broken Hips for movement or Broken arms for accuracy and strength.

Yeah it's cheesy, but that is how the mechanics of this work, so take advantage of it!

Rating: 4/5

Rubedo

Cost: 4x endeavors

Type: Permanent, Random

Effect(s): 20% returning survivors gain Hemophobia, 60% returning survivors skip next hunt and gain +1 courage, 20% returning survivors 'invert' their attribute modifiers.

So, for 4x endeavors something like this has to be really powerful, rare and worth spending almost your entire lantern year on. Rubedo is not it, not at all, in fact it might be the worst of the four innovations because of how weak the upside is and how awkward/punishing the other results are.

Hemophobia is quite an annoyance, but the worst part of this is the Elixir of Mirrors, because it is not an optional flip and all returning survivors must partake of the elixir, you have to work incredibly hard to engineer a situation where this endeavor will do something.

To whit, you need to take a bunch of injured survivors with neutral or negative stat modifiers out on a hunt (so that eliminates SotF settlements because they have +1 strength and +1 evasion baseline), complete that showdown despite the various stat penalties you have and then get back with enough endeavors to activate this - roll a 9+ and then benefit.

Compared to Citrinitas or Albedo this is absolutely terrible, it's really hard to get set up, it's hard to win when you are set up and unless it cost 1 endeavor to activate it's never worth the risk of trying to set up on this one.

The only reason to craft Rubedo is to get the passive bonuses - you just shouldn't be activating this one, ever.  Even the +1 courage is a garbage result because it's 4x endeavors and all returning survivors skipping the next hunt.

Thematically this is a great piece of design, but that does not translate to good mechanics.

Rating: 1/5