Top Offensive Gear Items in the Core Game and Gen 1 Expansions: Part 3 (Patreon)

Finger of God – Weapon Crafter/Phoenix 

This Weapon Crafter Spear (2/5+/5/Reach 2/+1 Accuracy, +1 Strength if you have 5+ Survival and at least one of each affinity) costs 1 x phoenix finger and 4x bone.  Which essentially makes it a Phoenix weapon (in the same way that the Zanbato is a White Lion weapon) and that immediately decreases the desirability of the weapon by a large amount because the Phoenix is honestly one of the worst risk/reward monsters in the entire game because of the poor overall quality of its gear vs. the sheer danger in instant death threats that the Phoenix represents.  

However, there are some items which are worth hunting from The Phoenix and the Finger of God is absolutely one of these.  It's a phenomenal mid game spear that has excellent stats and a reasonable crafting cost (generic bones tend to pile up a lot in the mid game in my experience).  

It doesn't do anything fancy, but it is a spear, and that alone is worth it's weight in gold.

Scrap Sword – Weapon Crafter 

The Scrap Sword is a bit of a pain in the ass in some fronts.  It's a Sword (mediocre weapon type, made better with Vagabond Armor) and it's stats are decent, (2/5+/3/+4 Str on a perfect hit/RRU affinities = Deadly).  However I've found that the deadly activation ability is straight up worse than a luck charm on most builds (apart from Cyclopian Armor/Warriors of the Sun/Red Saviors) because you end up adding sub-optimal gear items into your grid in order to get it active and you can't easily stack the Luck Charm into that build.  

However, the potential of this weapon is not to be overlooked.  Effectively with the right gear this weapon can crit on a 8+ and that's a huge thing in this game. So the Scrap Sword makes it on my list.

Counterweight Axe – Weapon Crafter

I pretty much love everything about the Counterweight Axe. It's probably the most perfect Weapon Crafter weapon we have at the moment.   For 1 Bone, 1 Hide and 1 Organ we get a (2/6+/4/Reach 2/Puzzle Red = Deal 1 Wound on a Perfect hit without drawing a hit location).  This is probably my favourite Timeless Eye fighting art weapon and it's almost certainly the sole reason why adding to the Perfect Hit range is so rare in KD:M dealing wounds without drawing Hit Locations is a massive thing, the only drawback is that you miss out on critical hit bonuses, but vs. certain monsters (and in the mid/late game) you don't care about that at all.  

Additionally it's an Axe (which is a superb weapon type) and it has reach 2 (Plus it looks badass with the stone faces added to the head of the axe in order to give it more weight).  It's the weapon I just don't get to use enough, but I know that when we have more early game monster variety the Counterweight Axe will find itself back into the rotation.

Silk Whip - Spidicules

The Silk Whip is a great example of what Whips should be (along with the Rawhide Whip).  It's a (2/6+/3) weapon that has the better version of the ability as the Leather Worker's Hunter's Whip (Archiving Mood Cards in Play on a perfect hit instead of discarding them). In addition, it's available earlier, it's built out of just 2 resources and it has a more desirable speed (2 is easier to manage early game than 3).  In all honesty it's one of the better weapons in the Spidicules expansion and it's a reason why I feel that Spidicules could have been a really great expansion if it has just been tuned a bit further.

Unfortunately Whips do not get any better in the current game design, we'll need to see if 1.5 improves the Whip situation more, or if it just relegates them to useful utility.  If we get a better mid and late game whip then I'll probably be able to change my opinion on whips in general and really start praising the Silk Whip.

Lion Beast Katar – White Lion

Lion Beast Katar is a (2/7+/3/Deadly/Paired) weapon that allows you to very quickly start work on one of the most vital parts` of the early game, crit-farming.  Crit farming is essential because the more resources you generate early, the stronger a base you will have for the mid and late game because you're more likely to get hide and organs (which are generally more important than bones because of armors/organ grinder gear).  The Lion Beast Katar statwise is just a stronger founding stone, but that deadly keyword is huge.  On top of that, it's a Katar, which is one of the best offensive weapon types in the game, and it allows you to hit the specialisation by LY4, decreasing the amount of nasty reactions that hit your attacking survivors.  Offense providing defense is huge. 

Paired isn't something I consider on my LBK survivor, simply +2 Speed is not worth a slot on a grid when you can have Monster Grease instead.  That's the big problem with most paired weapons (apart from the Lion Knight ones), they are basically just +speed on your main weapon plus a gimped version of the non-paired weapon. This is something that could be fixed very easily and it's on my list of community fixes for the future.  But we'll see what 1.5 brings before we move on that. 

LBK + Luck Charm + Rawhide + Fecal Salve/Wisdom Potion is one of my top early game builds (along with the Rib Blade version of that build) and it's so powerful that I will chase after it in every single game I can.  

In fact, the only real downside to Katars is they have no mid/late game versions without expansion.  The DBK expansion fixes that completely however and if you're using the DBK I'd probably rate the LBK as being a top 10 weapon.  In fact, pound for pound, based on return of investment, the only weapon better than the LBK is the Rib Blade.  

LBK, so good every hunt party should have at least 1.

Next time we reach the halfway mark with this list (yeah it's 8 parts and I'm not sorry about that at all!)