Originally meant to be a part of the Remastered Wave 1, the Screaming God was sequestered into its own little group over the course of 2024 due to lingering concerns with the quality of the written content at the time and the overall polish of the product. It was then during the Black Friday 2025 celebrations that we finally saw the Screaming God first bundled together with the bee-themed monsters and the Dead Armor set as a scheduled release for 2026.

Half a year later, this chunky box has finally made it into the hands of backers and the people that pre-ordered it during Black Friday, with a retail release that is definitely soon to follow.

Ever since I first heard of this expansion, it was one of my personally most anticipated releases from the whole of the second Kickstarter campaign – which is why I wanted to talk about it!

Can you already hear the call of the infinite stampede?
The thundering of hooves?
Or maybe the whispers of something which lingers even further beyond still?

Obvious Spoiler Warning!

In this huge box you will find, first and foremost, the Screaming God – a fearsome node 4 Quarry monster which you will have to fight whilst actively chasing it down.
During this frantic encounter survivors will be dodging variable terrain formations appearing in their path as they dash and weave along an ever changing track whilst also taking care to not fall behind too far as a raging Stampede follows the monster’s path, ready to trample everything to dust underneath hundreds of hooves.

But there is something else most peculiar about this box, something we have not seen in all our prior Lantern Years: this expansion is adorned with a second crest on the front!
It is a sign of the deeper horrors that lurk within this set, namely the new Finale monster ready to test the mettle of the very strongest of your survivors – the Parasite Queen!

Whilst these 2 monsters can be used freely from one-another and do not require each other’s presence during any given campaign, they are linked from a lore perspective and thus were bundled together.
Or, at the very least, that is the conclusion that I have come to whilst experiencing the contents of this expansion one way or another.

And there is a lot of it.

As a Node 4 quarry monster, the Screaming God and its gear fall right in between the Dung Beetle Knight and the King in my opinion and could slot neatly into your campaign play of a standard Core game run even without any other major expansions. And whilst I admittedly would still call it a bit of a tough proposition – 18TGH on Lvl1 (!) – Phoenix and Blacksmith gear should be able to handle this really loud goat well enough.
And as you might be able to imagine, the pay-off for taking down such a powerful monster will be tremendous for your settlement as well!

As the Infinite Track keeps churning out layer after layer of Labyrinth tiles.., well.., infinitely, today we will be looking at the Screaming God and it’s gameplay for both the showdown and the settlement phase, the included Vignette “Chasing Oblivion” as well give a hint or two for the Parasite Queen and her abilities before I draw my own final conclusions for this expansion in the hope of making your decision of whether or not this loudmouthed deity is worth your time a little easier.

As with past overviews, I will be looking at this expansion from a non-Arc-survivor point of view.

And whilst I would like to look at these monsters’ lore again as well, I doubt I can add much to the conversation at this point, besides maybe one fairly specific point which I got just a little while ago.

From here on out there will be Spoilers, so consider yourself warned a second time!

***

The Screaming God – Settlement Gameplay

***

Even before the story events leading up to this new quarry start (and they do start very early on!), it should be noted that the Screaming God can be slotted into each of the currently available campaigns without any major issues.
The rulebook does mention that hunting this fierce monster in PotSun or PotStars might be a bit trickier though. Which, between the PotSun nemesis gauntlet post-Lantern Year 20 and the construction of the Tomb in PotStars, is an understandable concern, however survivors do tend to scale higher in both these campaigns and any settlement doing well should not have that much of an issue engaging with the new content by Lantern Year 17.
Still, I am willing to agree that the Screaming Goat will generally have a better chance to shine in PotLantern or PotDreamkeeper.

Like most of the newer expansions, the Screaming God is not only a step-up in complexity and card count, but also set up to change things up for your campaign quite early on.
In this case the introductory event for this quarry monster starts in Lantern Year 3.
Yes, you read that right.
Three.

Over a multi-part series of events spanning several Lantern Years you will first exile a survivor (keeping their record sheet around) to become the Outcast and then follow their personal story, checking in 2 more times in LY6 & 8 respectively.
During this process you might just create a very powerful survivor whilst being beholden to the infinite track the Screaming God is running on and the coincidental struggle of a group of strangers hunting the mighty beast (see: Vignette – Chasing Oblivion below or here).
Eventually the Outcast will return to their settlement in Lantern Year 17, weirder and wiser, clad in a set of rare gear pieces channeling the draws of the infinite. And, maybe the most important part, they will add the ability to hunt the Screaming God to the settlement!

Besides this very early first interaction with the monster’s story, the presence of the Screaming God also adds several new Fighting Arts and Disorders (3 each) as well as 3 new Settlement Events and a new innovation – Taxidermy.

None of the new settlement events can be classified as purely good or purely bad for your survivors, typically having a chance for both depending on the situation or your willingness to lean into them.
One of them even gives you a chance to gain Red Fist (SFA)!

Meanwhile Taxidermy is a Pottery (I) consequence adding not only both +1 Survival Limit but also +1 departing survival and an event trigger via an endeavor.
This Trophy Wall you will be able to erect in a settlement under the Screaming God’s influence gives you an opportunity to spend your hard-won Indomitable resources on symbols of your successful conquest instead of their usual effects.
Whilst you will be mainly limited in your choice of what to build by the type of resource you are spending (bone, organ or hide) the settlement’s society principle will have a major impact on how these different types of monuments you can create will take effect.

Whilst the always available “Symbols of Vanquished Furiosity” will only be active for a single hunt each time, Collective Toil will allow you to craft lasting improvements for the settlement phase that can stack several times if built more than once and Accept Darkness on the other hand will give you a buff to a singular survivor, not only blessing them with stats in relation to the amount of lasting severe injuries they have suffered, but also the ability to ignore some of the worst of the worst ones (like Broken Back or Hamstrung)!

I would like to mention at this point, that if you do not own the GCE – at the time of writing this – the only available hide based Indomitable Resource is the Phoenix’s Fateful Feather featured in the Indomitable Survivor – Fated Dagger Domino White Box.
It should also be noted that there are a couple of Indomitable Resources that actually can’t be used at all – like the Gnawed Gastrolith – which is a perfect stone.
At the same time, for some reason, the Screaming God itself only has 1 Indomitable in the box, which is a bone.

With all that being said about the non-gear-related additions to general non-combat-gameplay, let’s move on to the showdown and hunt phases for a bit.

***

The Screaming God – The Showdown

***

With the Outcast returned to the settlement in Lantern Year 17, you will have the means to seek out the horrors of the infinite by yourself should you dare.

To briefly touch on the Hunt Phase:
Hunting a Screaming God is usually a tough affair and that’s not just because they are going to be long hunts.
Without giving away too much of any of the actual events, most of the hunt events associated with the Screaming Goat have very punishing elements, with their best outcomes typically allowing you to skip the next hunt space .. which, with how the hunt is set up, will then send you straight into the next Screaming God event.
Who doesn’t love some perpetual motion?

Oh, and let me know what you would do if you found a gigantic ball of antelopes crawling about?

But a punishing hunt isn’t entirely unexpected for a late-game monster such as this. As mentioned before, the Screaming God is a Node 4 quarry monster, so you can already reasonably expect a couple of things from the fight as well:
– higher complexity than most other quarry monsters
– attack profiles between 4 and 6 DMG baseline
– auto-hits for 5DMG usually scaling in amount per monster level
– some sort of insta-kill or insta-severe mechanic (or both)
– a hit location deck that is painful to attack into
– powerful gear

And dare I say it, the Screaming God has all of those!

The monster in cold, hard stats:
Lvl1 AI: 12B/5A Stats: 18TGH
Lvl2 AI: 13B/7A/2L Stats: 21TGH +1DMG +1LCK-Token
Lvl3 AI: 14B/10A/4L Stats: 24TGH +1DMG/SPD +2LCK-Tokens

The Screaming God doesn’t really have a MOV stat as it is set to infinite. Which means you can prepare yourself for a monster that not only bobs and weaves freely between the approaching terrain tiles, but also regularly drifts around a corner to shoot a Withering Blast straight into your face.
What’s that, you may ask – oh, nothing much, its just the upgradable 5DMG auto-hit the monster can do by yelling at you really really loudly thanks to the glowing parasites infecting its body.

You will come to see that a lot of things about the Screaming God are both loud and fast.

When fighting this monster a round will start with you drawing a Horizon Card. This dictates the position of the next row of terrain tiles coming into play.

Once you know the placement of these upcoming tiles, the Screaming God leaps into the air and over any terrain on the field and/or coming in and then everything stationary moves 7 spaces towards the Stampede – this does include terrain and knocked down survivors.
You will also need to take care not to collide with incoming terrain during this “movement” as collision will deal Monster Level + 3DMG to your survivor. Or, worse yet, if you are too close to the Stampede, you might just get dragged into it – which means certain death.
..
But you can just dash out of the way during that flow, can’t you?

Once you have survived that first step, you will have to actually deal with the monster and the rest of its traits and an AI card, of course.

Whilst its AI is set up to typically deal 4DMG per hit, there are a whole host of effects you’ll have to deal with that vary through several degrees of dickishness.
This includes, but is not limited to:
>archiving your shield
>eating fur gear
>trampling you into the floor so hard that you can’t get out,
>just running away i.e. drawing another Horizon card
>knockback 8
>adding several effects to Withering Blast
>yelling so loudly you go deaf

Luckily you might find yourself close enough to one of the small crevices in between the Labyrinth tiles that you can run into for a moment of relative safety as there is a sweet spot in which not even this monster can get to you.
..
You can still dash? Can you?

Meanwhile, other survivors are in serious risk of getting picked up and getting Devoured by the Grasping Undermaw. You guessed it, not only does collision with the monster also deal Monster Level + 3DMG (due to all the arms lining the gums) but it will also pick you up with its undermaw if its still empty.
And thanks to its infinite movement, the Screaming God will typically get to its target, running over who-ever it has to on the way over!

Luckily there is a certain elegance to the way the movement of the terrain on the board is designed – you will always have a 4-space wide gap between individual rows of Labyrinth tiles and you should usually be able to find a couple of spaces which you can duck into to get out of the way.
..
You can still dash?
..
Can you?

Not to mention that once your survivor has the Devoured status there are typically only 2 ways back out of the monster:
If the survivors deal a critical wound to the Screaming God, the person who was Devoured is placed in the monster’s blind spot (ready to get run over again with another reflex).
Or they get thrown up during a Withering Blast as a living projectile.

5 DMG x Monster Level in a 7-spaces-wide cone and firing off a survivor-sized bullet?
Sure.

And this monster’s Hit Location deck isn’t much friendlier either. Featuring a couple of staple effects (2x Super-Dense, 2x First Strike, 1x Impervious) the real killer in this deck is the sheer volume of reflexes.
A lot of these will either deal 8-10 knockback to the attacker or move the monster 10 spaces towards the horizon, so expect attacks to get canceled mid-way through quite often unless you can reliably crit the monster (there are A LOT of crit locations at least) or bring some form of reaction cancelling like Katar spec.

But there is still the proverbial elephant in the room: 18TGH is quite a lot for Lvl1! That is more than most Node3 monsters have on Lvl3!?
Well.., realistically speaking, if you have managed to successfully hunt any Lvl3 monster before the Screaming Goat you should probably be fine.

For some “easy” math and a couple of simple examples:
With Survival of the Fittest and Clan of Death (I) all survivors should start at 2STR; or if you have picked Barbaric as well (which there are good reasons for with this monster) you are at a 3STR baseline; with a Lantern Sword (3STR + sharp) you are already hitting 17STR in wound attempts on average. Add to that a humble Monster Tooth Necklace and you should be golden.
Any club in a full Lantern Armor Set should also do the trick.
Or as a third option: Phoenix Armor Set bonus Charge is +7STR ideally, together with base stats and a Sonic Tomahawk you are looking at 15-17 – not quite there yet, but, oh, wait a minute – there’s no dice roll added to that number yet! And you could activate savage on that set-up as well!
Of course you will also have access to the Lemniscate gear as well. And whilst it is Irreplaceable, it does represent +8STR every other round.

Finally there is the matter of resources – somewhat shockingly – not a single one of the critical effects in the monster’s hit location deck will just flat out give you a random monster resource!
At best, they will put a Divine Fragment terrain tile into play. And whilst that is essentially the same thing – a random draw from the resource deck – having to spend both an act and a move to use the terrain and risk being knocked down on a 1 – 3 is a very dangerous proposition in this fight!
And it’s not like you can just leave it for later either – as static terrain it will just get left behind as you are running away from the Stampede!

And then there is the matter of the numbers.

Nothing is easy with the Screaming God, not even looting the monster.

Once you have felled the mighty beast you are only presented with a handful of basic resources for your trouble and the event Desperate Harvest.
Briefly summarized: both the Level of the monster and the distance between the felled Screaming God and the Stampede will afford you with an amount of “opportunity” and drawing from the resource deck will drain this “opportunity” by the little red number in the top right of the resource card. You can stop harvesting at any time and escape safely, but if your opportunity runs out – i.e. falls to 0 or below – you will have to roll on the trampled chart which has a whopping 30% chance for you to keep your looted resources with everyone taking a random severe injury for the trouble.
..
And that’s the good result. Things could play out much worse if you rolled a 2 – 7 or, Feline Entity forbid, a 1.

Depending on your campaign, a Barbaric settlement will gain access to Ultimate Weapon during the late game – which allows you to pick any 1 card of your choice to take from a monster’s resource deck. Doesn’t that just sound incredible just about now?
Even just a Scavenger Kit will do loads for you here. Needless to say, any effect that lets you draw from the monster’s resource deck without having to take “opportunity” into account is REALLY powerful!

***

The Screaming God – The Gear

***

So, you have just defeated your first Screaming God, been through hell and back, and just barely made it out alive with scraps of fur, splintered antlers and a strangely shimmering stomach.

This better be worth it!

And it is!
..
Most of the time.

Power-level-wise Screaming God gear is situated below King gear but still quite a bit higher up than other quarry loot. From my view point I would compare it to Bullfrogdog gear in terms of its offensive capabilities with a lot more potential for both mobility and utility.
The Bullfrogdog will win out when it comes to being defensive though.

Featuring a wide array of weapons, all are potent in their own, sometimes quirky, ways. Most of the weaponry activates bonus effects it the survivor using them has moved at least 6+ spaces during their act with potentially turning a weapon that is either okay or even just “eh”-ish into a great piece of equipment if they managed to travel far enough.
How about a club with Surpass 5 that gets +5STR after moving 6+ spaces?
Or Deadly 3 on a savage axe?
Or Perfection 2 on a sword with Barbed 4?
The sharp, Deadly 1, Devastating 1 grand weapon losing slow and gaining +1SPD after moving 12 spaces is just a little bit ridiculous, but the real puzzle for that one will be activating that effect in the first place.

And, you already know I do have to mention it:
Trophy Taker is a 1/9+/17 shield that lets you draw an indomitable resource from a monster it deals the killing blow to. Whilst limited to once per monster per campaign, this does represent a comparatively easy way to try out the Screaming God’s indom weapon even without being able to kill it at Lvl3.
Or you could alternatively pick and chose the best possible Trophy Wall addition for the settlement.

And then there is the Alpha Armor Set as well.

This is quite a potent set, even just for the effect of the helmet – spreading +1MOV to all survivors as long as the wearer is the most insane in the group – is pretty incredible, especially if other survivors have gear that requires them to move 6 space during their act. But between the shoes and waist pieces and the maneuver for the full set, I’m sure you can get up to quite some silliness with this one.

That Slenderman must have felt pretty safe turn 1 before Trygve used the maneuver of his armor set to charge all the way and around a 90° angle (thanks to a new Fighting Art) and started hitting it with 3SPD, 17STR, sharp and Devastating 1 immediately!

And it isn’t even that expensive either when it comes to the amount of resources used to craft these items, which is probably for the best as the Screaming God does have a tendency to eat that chest armor.

Sadly, or rather, disappointingly, this expansion does not add any new seed patterns to the game. Whilst it is a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things, I thought I should at least bring it up.

***

Vignette – Chasing Oblivion

***

Similar to the Black Knight expansion, the Screaming God features a Vignette encounter with the monster, giving players a chance to fight a curated version of the hunt even without a settlement that has made it far enough to hunt it legitimately.
Obviously Lantern Year 17 is beyond several of the typical breaking points for campaigns, and I am really happy this has become a point of consideration for these late-game additions.
And you even get to try out a few of the new weapons from the Screaming God with these survivors as well!

This Vignette is part of the Outcast’s storyline and can be played as part of the event in Lantern Year 8. As per the rules, this is entirely optional and can be skipped but offers a nice refresher for this fairly complex and intense fight if desired. Also, achieving victory in the Vignette will unlock a strain for all future Outcasts!

Of course, should you simply want to play a consequence-free fight against the Screaming God – perhaps to showcase it to friends, or as a one-off for an evening, this Vignette will give you an ideal opportunity to do so even without a running campaign.

I have played this Vignette as part of my Season 3 settlement for the site and my playthrough can be found here.

It’s a shame these 4 were not included in the box as miniatures, but further delays or a price increase for this already chonky box wouldn’t have been great either.
And, according to a Team Death member, they have picked up on a certain demand for these 4 and I would not be surprised to see them in a White Box at some point next year (maybe around GenCon 2027?).

***

The Parasite Queen

***

Whether or not destiny has bestowed upon you a glance behind the curtain that is the Stampede (or a campaign played by Deno), any settlement that has elected the Parasite Queen as their Finale monster, no matter if there is a Screaming God as well, will start to feel a Creeping Longing right around Lantern Year 15.
Survivors you thought you knew well might suddenly start running blindly into the teeming darkness or lose themselves to a brooding restlessness as they stare at an unknowable destination, babbling about their collective destinies.
And no matter what, eventually the whole settlement will feel this longing in their hearts and wander off, leaving only the old and infirm behind – setting their sights on the origin of their calling!

For they have been granted an audience!

Just to get expectations for this short part straight – I have no intention of spoiling much of the fight or the monster as we whole outside of what I get to play for the site (hopefully soon).
This part is merely here to tease and prod your curiosity.

I’ve said it before in a different post, to me the Parasite Queen represents a deeper horror lurking in the setting.
Whilst monsters like the White Lion, Sunstalker or Dung Beetle Knight have all slowly moved away from being these unknowable horrors towards being animals in an ecosystem as I grew more familiar with both the fights and the setting, the Parasite Queen firmly inhabits this visceral spot lying somewhere beyond the darkness still.
Something about her/it is more grand than the rest. And there are definitely machinations at play here we cannot fully fathom yet.

There is something uncompromising about the way how a Finale encounter like the Parasite Queen can just tear survivors apart without much consideration.
And whilst I understand if this isn’t for everyone from a gameplay point of view, not only do I think that a Finale (especially if you can reinforce your team during the fight) can do something like this, it is also a narrative device to convey the scale and gravitas of what you are struggling against here.

This is likely the truest clash against an Entity we have gotten to experience thus far.

I’m also going to leave this here, to hopefully inspire some curiosity:

Oh, and there is a Pillar card included in this box as well, but I would suggest you leave that one off to the side until you have fought the Parasite Queen once at least.

***

Lore

***

!xob cisum tnaig a s’tI

***

Final Thoughts

***

Let me start this off by quickly saying that I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with with the Screaming Goat and its various additions to the game so far!
As a whole, I would say that ALL new expansions released post GCE thus far have proven their worth in one way or another – with this box being no exception!

The Screaming God is a complex Node 4 Quarry monster, with an interesting showdown consisting of many different moving parts that surprisingly manages to build a holistic experience but sometimes has you fatally forget about the fact that you actually have to fight against a fairly dangerous monster as well.
And whilst your rewards for achieving victory are more danger, successfully gathering the resources of this monster can set your settlement up to make it all the way to the Finale, which might very well end up being the Parasite Queen also included in this expansion.

Overall this expansion offers 2 challenging late-game monsters in one big box. And whilst I would personally say that both of these new additions to the game are overall well designed and that I enjoyed fighting the Screaming God especially, there are some things that might be off-putting for potential players.
The fight against the Screaming God and the subsequent gathering of resources has a lot that can just “go wrong” out of nowhere. Whilst the dynamic fight between terrain, the monster and the Stampede aligns beautifully and works well most of the time, if the Screaming God draws Withering Momentum one too many times or kicks you in the wrong direction, things can just be over. It double dips into many different types of “danger” at almost all times and those can and eventually will compound into certain doom.
..
You can still dash? Can you?

Sadly, whilst I have been highlighting positives and difficulty mostly thus far, there were a couple of disappointing moments with this expansion as well.
#1: I would say this is the biggest one: the rule book is again bound pretty weakly. The main problem seems to be that it can be opened beyond the crease that shows where the fold of the page should be. I have been able to mostly “fix” mine by applying glue to the areas close to the spine. Though liberal application of adhesive tape has also proven to do the trick.
Alternatively, support will swiftly send you a replacement as well, but you’ll have to be careful to not end up with the same issues.
#2: the lack of seed patterns. It just feels a little weird to not get any in a large expansion at this point, especially for a quarry monster. Of course an argument could be made that not every box needs everything. Overall, a minor complaint.
#3: only 1 Indomitable resource/weapon. This one may be another minor complaint. Whilst I do not think that a Node 4 quarry needs 3 or 4 of these upon release, it feels wrong to only get a single one with the Screaming God, especially as this monster gives us access to the Trophy Taker shield and the ability to draw extra indoms from monsters. It really should have been 2 at least.
#4: the armor set minis and weapon variety. I’ve mentioned this (complained about it) before already: why are certain weapons limited only to only one hand? Why are there only 2 axes and both are only for the left hand? But then there are also 7 swords spread across the sprue? The Bullfrogdog minis had a similar problem.
The poses of the minis are great, definitely – but some of the limitations per miniature are just weird to me.

So, having taken all this into consideration, should you buy the Screaming God expansion?
If you are looking for a new monster to fuel the late-game part of your campaigns, which you reach regularly – then yes! In that case it is an easy recommendation from me! Especially if you are looking for a challenge!

If you are new to the game, or less experienced with the late game overall, things do change a little.
For one, it’s going to be an expensive box, likely priced around $175-185, which does put it into the same realm as Dragon King. And that’s some serious competition already! Having access to a new campaign like PotStars is really good in terms of longevity of the game, and I don’t think the presence of the Parasite Queen alone can beat that.

In that sense, I also won’t be adding this expansion to my “Big 4” – Frogdog, Sunstalker, Dragon King & Black Knight – all of which I would consider more in line with the idea of a “must buy”.
With all its strengths and particularities taken into account, to me, this feels like it belongs into the same tier I placed the Red Witches in, alongside Dung Beetle Knight or Slenderman.

If you are looking at getting your very first expansion to the game, outside of splurging on the GCE, a new Node 1 quarry monster like the Gorm or Frogdog – if available – will do a lot more for you than a more varied late-game.
But even if you are looking at getting a Node 4 Quarry specifically to spice up life in the settlement, the Dung Beetle Knight might be a cheaper option for you to consider that enters your campaign as a hunt-able monster quite early – in Lantern Year 8!
But to be fair though, DBK gear is not comparable in any way to the offensive capabilities of Screaming God weaponry. It does however hold its own in terms of defensiveness and utility.

All that being said, the Screaming God expansion does still slot fairly nicely into an otherwise un-upgraded PotLantern campaign .. and if you enjoy the idea of a bunch of challenging fights for some nordic/Viking-themed gear or even if you just like the models – don’t let me stop you.
You might have already heard the calling of the Queen, for all I know.

Although, you might want to consider getting an Indomitable Survivor white box or 2 for the core game’s quarries in that case – to make Taxidermy (I) actually work for you.
Wanderer – Aeneas also adds disposable organ Indoms to each of the Core game quarry monsters! Turns out organs make for some surprisingly good Taxidermy symbols.

***

Oof, that was a lot. I get the feeling these are getting longer each time – which is not at all what I am trying to do.
And yet I do still feel like I am missing something?

Anyways, I do hope this overview of what the Screaming God is all about can help give you an idea of whether this monster is for you or not.

If you want to see it in action, the Screaming God is a part of my Season 3 on the site, and it will likely make another appearance in Season 4 as well.
The same (hopefully) goes for the Parasite Queen as well.

But that was more than enough for one day!
If you made it this far, thank you very much for your time!
You can still dash this round.., can you?
Amathul