Endeavouring for Success: Home Sweet Home. (Patreon)

This time on the Endeavour Channel we are going to dive into the weakest tree of innovations, Home. While there are a couple of stand out gems in this tree; such as Family or Enduring Legacy (Partnership promo variant); and also some decent situational cards, but on the whole it lacks the power that the art, faith, science and of course music (aka the best tree) have. In fact, I'd go as far as to say it's even weaker than the Alchemy tree we talked about last time.

Still there are some gems in the rough, and this tree is worth pushing through in the mid game just to get to Family. So we'll take a dive into its endeavors today and remember, home is where the heart is, except in the world of Kingdom Death - it's kept in the art class there.

Bed

Cost: 1x endeavor

Type: Permanent, Temporary, Random

Effect(s): 30% gain +1 insanity, 70% skip next hunt, cure all of one category broken arm/hip/rib or 1x ruptured muscle.

One of the few ways to fix severe injuries in the game, bed is both incredible and disappointing. One of the most bizarre exclusions from the list of broken injuries is broken legs; legs are notorious for requiring bed rest, more so than arms (for example) and having them excluded is both frustrating and unthematic. This feels like an omission on the part of APG because a broken hip is also -1 movement (same as legs) and that can be fixed in a bed. So I am left wondering at this point why bed cannot handle legs at all?

Also, it is known that broken ribs is not a serious drawback for some survivors, so this brings you down to having to fix broken arms and ruptured muscles. If the Gorm is an available monster then alchemy tends to be the superior way to deal with breaks due to the cheeky way you can first fix the negative stat and then afterwards fix the broken body part in order to get a buff. 

This leaves Ruptured Muscle - which can be an absolute disaster for a hunter. Ruptured Muscle denies you the use of fighting arts and that is often the end for many hunter builds. It is this little fix here that puts Bed in the useful and sometimes essential column - but the randomness holds it back. 

Rating: 3/5 (I'd push it to 4/5 if it worked on legs)

Partnership (Core Game)

Cost: 2x endeavors

Type: Permanent

Effect(s): Partner two survivors, they may only intimacy with each other. When they depart together they get +2 survival. While adjacent during the showdown they gain +1 strength each. If one partner dies, the other loses this ability and gains a random disorder.

Well, you can get partnership for free sometimes? That's nice and it's a lovely storytelling moment, especially when it's generated by rivalry.

Mechanically though, this is a below average endeavor. The double cost keeps it back from being something you want to use too often because it's not worth spending the two resources on. There are many, many other single endeavor locations that are better than this.

When you get it for free, or if you are swimming in endeavors it can feel like a good pick, but there is another rather serious downside, these two survivors - who will be valued members of your settlement because they go out on hunts - can only intimacy with each other. This means you have to risk both of them when you perform intimacy, you can't let them go off with a less valuable survivor who you can afford to lose if you roll badly.

It also forces you to take out a male and a female if you want to be able to breed from this pair. Partnership is progressive in that it allows any combination of sex to partner up, but it denies this partnership from having offspring for family if you choose same sex partners. As we'll see below, the promotional version of partnership has a version that is way better, both mechanically and progressively.

Rating: 2/5

Partnership - Devoted Union (Promotional Till Death Do Us Part)

Cost: 2x endeavors

Type: Permanent

Effect(s): Go read the card please, I'm not going through this mechanical mess here.

So, this card is an absolute rules nightmare and honestly I am still not entirely clear how it works. The gist of it is there is a once per turn special combined attack they can do, where both of them are involved in the attack and they get to spread out the hit locations between them.

However, the mechanics of this ability are an absolute mess, it's not clear what happens to the partner's turn and we've never had a clear answer from APG as to how this card is supposed to work. It's just a nice idea vomited onto the page and in many ways it looks like a rough version of the far cleaner Synchronized Strike secret fighting art.

Honestly this card ends up needing a load of house ruling to get it to work because as written it's a disaster. So I'm going to give it a low rating and move onto the far cleaner and more enjoyable option. 

Rating: 1/5 (You might find this score higher depending on how you house rule the card's mechanics).

Partnership - Enduring Legacy (Promotional Till Death Do Us Part)

Cost: 2x endeavor

Type: Permanent

Effect(s): Head over to this post from Founding Stone for the (almost) full card text. But basically it lets you pass on a fighting art and 1 attribute point to a child who is either born from the pair or adopted by them. Up to a limit of 3 (4 if they get twins for their last roll).

Yes, this card is everything Partnership should be, in addition to being mechanically progressive by allowing adoption, it also limits 'inheritance spam' using the same two survivors over and over while also giving you ways to pass down a fighting art and ensure that you can maintain strategies like Backstabber for the entire campaign without being forced to sculpt it.

Since this Partnership came out I have stopped using the other two versions and I consider this to be the best home innovation in the deck alongside Family. It's in the online shop right now (but only 30 copies at the time of writing this), you should get yourself a copy if you can afford it.

Rating: 5/5

Settlement Watch (Manhunter)

Cost: 1x endeavor

Type: Permanent, Random

Effect(s): 70% chance of getting +1 fighting art if you have none, 30% chance of getting +1 strength if you have 0 or less.

So, for most settlements, this is a 70% chance of hitting a fighting art and 30% chance of nothing. This is due to the sheer number of ways that a settlement will have +1 strength even on its newborn survivors. Still, ways of gaining a fighting art on a new survivor without having them age is nothing to sniff at and of particular note is the combo this endeavor presents with Romantic - giving you 3 fighting arts to choose from for a new survivor.

It's a great way to help build a B-Team of survivors or train up replacements without having to send them out hunting.

Rating: 4/5

Shadow Dancing (Sunstalker)

Cost: 1x endeavor, a survivor must have died last hunt or showdown.

Type: Permanent, Random

Effect(s): 50% gain +3 insanity and a fighting art, 50% gain Sneak Attack.

This is bad memento mori. I really cannot stress enough that things which require dead survivors need to have powerful abilities as a baseline. This one is just a random shot at getting either a random fighting art or gaining sneak attack. Honestly look at it in comparison to Settlement Watch above, it's just awful. Really, really atrocious.

You should avoid innovating this wherever possible and if you do have it, don't bother activating it unless you have spare innovations. It's got synergy with Romantic of course, but there are better ways to trigger Romantic's bonus.

Rating: 1/5

And that's out of the way, so next time we can move onto one of the better tech trees! While I do rag on Hovel a lot, it is worth noting that there are some great options within it, stuff like Partnership, Settlememt Watch are good options and Family almost makes the line worth it by itself - but you want to avoid making Hovels in Lantern/Sun for as long as possible, you want Music for the early game, Art for the mid game and only then should you consider moving into Home (even then, as we'll see - Faith and Science are overall stronger than Home).