Is it finally time for the next Lantern Year? Yes. Yes it is.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t expect this slow-down as soon as I mentioned that I wanted to put stuff out more quickly, but hey, at least its a track record of sorts?
But, let’s not dwell on it for too long, and focus on stuff related to the game instead. Like Scarlet for instance. We do seem to actually have a new warehouse in the EU doing deliveries from now on – and its fast?! Incredible!

So, I’ve been trying my best to put my thoughts down in regards to the Tyrant Slayer and I’ve been failing miserably for over half an hour.
The long and short of it:
I like it. I don’t think 6STR base for an indom is necessarily that bad, especially as it wants the Red Power Core anyway. I don’t mind that its not made for the Dragon King quiver or arrow, or even the armor set. This feels like a Rawhide Armor weapon to me. Rawhide makes it real easy to activate the ability on the weapon.
It does feel necessary to point out that Tyrant Slayer Scarlet is one of the more scuffed White Boxes in a while. There is a fairly glaring misprint on the indomitable resource and between the art, the render on the cover and her model she has like 3 different chest-pieces.
Overall I’m just happy we are getting more indoms for the older Expansions of Death. Flower Knight next please!

And one more thing: I glossed over Summer Grimmory and his pillar card when I first wrote about it. We now know a little more about the effect, and that it basically turns any settlement into a PotSun-esque place, adding Heat Wave settlement events in addition to limiting the use of heavy armor and giving all survivors a +1STR-token on arrival.
This pillar does have me excited for a slightly different reason as this might be a first hint at a rework for the Core Game Over unlocks. Seeing Solar Flares is more or less a carbon copy of Rainy Season, has me hoping we get those turned into pillars to use at our own discretion at will.
Whilst I like the general idea of the unlocks, and I am well aware of its my game I can do what I want with it – the nature of Occular Parasites applying every time after the 15th settlement is a turn-off for me. Being able to apply them via pillar however seems like a general improvement to the concept!

Speaking of Heat Wave – on the way home the survivors were hit by yet another one. It actually was this Lantern Year’s settlement event! All in all, not too bad for an event for PotSun – we should be perfectly fine.

Looking over our options for the year, we finally had the 6 bones needed for the Sunring Bow, with even 1 spare for innovating as well. Alternatively, we could have built a full set of Leather Armor, if we’d be willing to use 1 of the feathers we still held in storage.

But I do like to innovate, so..
Saga, Pictograph, Face Painting or Lantern Oven.
The game was tempting me with Saga again. But I really wanted that oven. We didn’t need heat for a lot of things, and without Blacksmith armor it was even less mandatory for us.., but we could definitely still use the weapons. So, I picked Lantern Oven as the unga-bunga called to me.

Afterwards it was finally time we pooled all our bones and made the Sunring Bow – a much better bow with 2/4+/4 compared to the Cat Gut Bow. But of course the ability is where its at. Auto-wounds are always great, and considering the affinities on rawhide, it’s also really easily activated.

With the main thing I wanted to build this year achieved, I continued being unsure about what else to do for a bit, but ultimately I spent the Small Feathers to make 4 leather and build 3 parts of the Leather Armor set.

The settlement was also pooling their Love Juice at the time, and I had resolved myself to wait another Lantern Year before I would use any.

With the remaining endeavors, I purified another survivor and had them drink the Sacred Waters.
Basalt (+1ACC) was the lucky one this year.
At +2 we triggered intimacy between him and Celestine, and a healthy, yet unremarkable child was born.
Considering the parents, the child was named Meteor – unremarkable little Meteor.

With all endeavors spent, and a forced intermission thrust upon me by the Feline Entity, I had a chance for long and hard think about who to send out on this year’s hunt and, probably more importantly, about what we were hunting. Both going for another intermission lope or lion came to mind, but I did want more Phoenix stuff.

The big point of consideration that gave me pause was our progress towards weapon mastery. Both axe (Calys) and sword (Alissa) were only missing 2 more points and an ill-humored Phoenix might kill either of the 2 without much hesitation.
On the flipside, Calys could deal 5 wounds on her opening attack alone. Roll-wise these results were actually decently probable, just.. Phoenix-shenanigans might get in the way. Which in a way is a non-argument as that is just a constant for that fight.
Another good reason for birb-hunting was the fact that we needed 2 sets of Pustules to make the Sun Vestments (and a third one if I wanted to make some tasty Bird Bread).

I would just have to trust in the unga-bunga once more. I would be brave and honor the creed of my people. Just.., not too brave, I left the monster at Lvl1 whilst I was still missing weapon mastery.

The Hunters:
Squobble – green(leather bits, Beast Knuckles)
Alissa – blue (Rawhide Armor, Bone Blade)
Calys – red (Screaming Armor, Sonic Tomahawk)
Reef -yellow (Rawhide Armor, Sunring Bow)

Our damage potential with this group should be truly vast.

The Huntphase:
Reef was carrying around his Bone Pickaxe and we started the hunt off by looking for a nice grouping of rocks. An 8 resulted in another scrap. Not quite what we wanted, but much better than Hemophobia (D).
Before we were truly able to realize what was happening, we were caught in a Reoccurring Nightmare and stood at the edge of Overwhelming Darkness. Both Alissa and Calys found bodies covered in translucent moths. Calys quickly turned away, whilst Alissa, sure Partnership (I) .. *cough* her bond with Reef would refill her survival at the start of the fight, saved the first of the Moth people. Squobble saw a Nightmare Whale and Reef burned his out-stretched arms on his lantern.
This did mean they were going to get ambushed by the birb.

Oooh.., 1 of the random terrain I drew was the Perfect Lantern! This was only the second time I had drawn that terrain since getting that White Box (15th anniversary survivors)!
Besides the chance to loot a strange (Iron) resource that could be archived to do special stuff from LY15 onwards, the terrain itself also increased the perfect hit range of anybody adjacent to it! Great for our newest bow!
We just needed to survive 2 AI cards and 2 basics.

12 cards in the monster deck. The Ambush round began with Pustule Cannon. But without any survivor in the targeted zone, the card defaulted to the monster’s instinct. It sighed heavily from the top of the Nightmare Tree, and we suffered brain damage as I slowly started to notice that none of the Phoenixes I have encountered or ever will encounter have or will see us as a threat – even if we are actively killing them.
Without any age tokens amongst the group spiral age did nothing and not only that – but the monster also skipped the basic attack from Zeal!

Onwards to the actual first round.
The Difference Between Us.
Oof. All survivors had 0 age tokens, as we just had to reaffirm, so we got to choose a target. Squobble would have to take this terrifying card on the chin, which would likely result in a severe head injury.
But – what’s this? Oh! I had only then noticed, he would be able to run away from the attack! There was a flow between Materialize and the actual attack! So, yeah, obviously he was running away from that.
The following basic attack then targeted Alissa, which saw her get hit twice. She dodged the hit to her body, before she ran out of the Blast Zone.

With that the time for Calys to run in had come. She was foaming at the mouth. With a dash she found her way into the blind spot, chopping away like a maniac.
Sure. What a spread of cards. The genital exploding eyes, impervious and a hurricane.
With a Dried Acanthus in the back pocket, we kept attacking. One wound to the eyes, no crit, a miss on the Hand Parasites, I reroll because I couldn’t possibly miss the other wound, still nothing and I rolled a 1 on the regular wound. That did spare us from the reflex, but wow. Still, just wow.

Reef dashed up and emboldened before attacking with his new bow. With a Perfect Hit he dealt his first wound, followed by a second as the arrow impaled the monster’s hands.
Squobble tried to wound as well but he got stuck in a Rewind.
Alissa made use of her Rawhide Headband instead of attacking.

9 cards remaining, Analtorium had felt like the safer option to pick, so we were hoping Calys would just not get sucked in.
And she’s didn’t!
Unfortunately she was closest threat for the basic attack, which gave her an age token. The one thing we wanted to avoid! She took the 2 hits but dashed out of the Blast Zone.

Nerfed by the age token, she attacked anyhow, and the first thing we saw was that there was a Rewind amongst the hit locations. But to my astonishment, Calys employed the tactical bagging strategy perfectly. She rolled a 1 and prevented that wound reaction. Whilst a crit would have obviously been better, that was more than enough as well!
Two wounds followed that, the latter one displacing the monster, but Calys found a use for her age token and boldly followed the monster.

Squobble was close enough to reach still, hitting once, and setting off a gust of wind. This knocks over both Alissa and Reef, effectively ending our turn for another wound.

6 cards remaining. Unspoken. The monster tried to unspeak Alissa’s name. A 6 (7) – so nothing happened. At max Understanding the chances of it actually happening were slim to begin with, so she remained Alissa .. for now.
Squobble then tanked the basic attack again, dashing away from knockback and bleed.

My survivors got up, with significantly less +1STR-tokens and moved towards the fight.
The Perfect Lantern hadn’t done anything this far and I decided I would rather try to take it home with me. Reef was unsuccessful at picking up the dazzling structure, but after having to dash over to get to it, Alissa wrested it from the pedestal!
This meant that we had another reason to push hard for the Blacksmith!

Calys knew little of what was going on behind her as she attempted her attack for this round. On 5 rolls she hits 3 times, and converted all her hits into damage this time.

With the Phoenix displaced again, Squobble got cut off from the fight and wasn’t able to follow the monster, even if he had his dash available. Instead he picked a lantern off the Nightmare Tree.

3 cards remaining in the deck. The Difference Between Us was drawn yet again. This time the target was going to be Reef as he still had 0 age tokens.
The Phoenix teleported onto Alissa and she was flung away, before Reef took a few steps backwards to not get hit in the head for lethal amounts of damage.
The monster did not miss a beat as its basic attack follow up went after Reef as well, the Blast Zone pushing him away, sharp splinters of stone faces cutting him up.

With only Squobble and Calys active yet again, we were going for the kill at this point!
Calys hit her target often, but this time she quickly got rewound.
Squobble, now back in range to attack, was able to convert 2 more hits into damage. This left us with a single card in the deck as everbody else was violently flung away.

1 card remaining, the Phoenix used its Materialize, ready and eager to finally show us The Difference Between Us. This felt like a boon for us, really, as we could move the monster closer to our damage dealers.
Squobble stepped away from the heavy attack and instead took the much less painful basic afterwards.

The HL deck was almost empty at this point. And harboring some suspicions I sent in Alissa first and dashed to the side of the monster with Calys, should the settlement’s leader find the trap.
And she did! The monster spun around, ready to hit her as time was briefly stopped. Clearly weakened at this stage it missed 1 of the 2 hits, before Alissa was blasted away.

Calys saw her chance! She slammed into the monster hard, hitting it 3 more times. There was a rewind in the mix, but only 1 – we “just” needed to wound the other 2 spots and the birb was done!
The dice were rolled and with a one-two to the Feathered Neck she dealt the killing blow!

We did it!

The Difference Between Us is a scary looking card, but +1 for dash, its also a very telegraphed attack. All in all, its surprisingly tame whilst you have survival.

Calys (+1MOV) reached age 3 and was only 1 point off of axe mastery. Time for her to die, I guess.
Other than her, only Reef got proficiency with his bow.
In other rewards, Reef (+3surv/ins) triggered Insight, drawing a pattern – Spinal Sickle – nice!

As for resources we got a nice spread and should be able to make some progress should the events allow it. And besides, I shouldn’t complain after taking the Pyrolitic Light home with me. Now we just need to safely get it to LY15. Just 5 years… with Principle Conviction in between as well, so..

Not a single crit was a little disappointing but I’ll take what I can get, I guess.
“I should not be complaining” – instantly complains.

In the coming days, or week or two, we should be getting some more infos on the state of the Witches and Wanderers, and potentially the opening of the Dark Treasury alongside them.
So keep an eye out for that!

For the time being, I will try my best to recover from my recent social gathering and energize!

As always, thank you very much for your time, don’t get a sunburn.
Amathul