In case you are wondering what I mean by 2 for 1:
I have been fortunate enough to fight the Parasite Queen for a 2nd time beyond Season 3 just yesterday (as of writing this) and I figured I’d want to talk about how that fight went as well after I did the usual spiel for the Bloody Shallows’ Finale encounter with the matriarch.

But to not delay the inevitable any longer, let us venture into the Bloody Shallows one last time and see just how much of a legacy this settlement can leave behind!

***

This was it!
One last fight loomed and one last settlement phase before that.

Honestly, looking at the remaining survivors and what gear we had managed to build over these 30 Lantern Years, at this point I didn’t think we’d stand much of a chance against the Gold Smoke Knight either.., so this would mostly be an experiment to find out how the Parasite Queen would treat us by comparison.
And it felt very much just like some of the Parasite Queen’s cards stated: a fight with a foregone conclusion.

But why was I being so negative already? That’s not how you build morale!
First things first – the survivors had to return home, gain 3 endeavors (2 for returning survivors & 1 for Cooking I) and then I had to draw our random settlement event.
And it’s Nickname.

The new nicknames did not add any detrimental effects to the 2 survivors so that was a fine outcome all in all.., but there was still one more event to resolve:

The Beckoning.

With the Creeping Longing finally having taken hold in every single living survivor, the glowing parasitic forms finally presented themselves to my small remaining group.
Stepping from the darkness, these shining emblems of perfection brought along the invitation.
They brought it to all of them but one: Daniel.
He who had suffered Fear of the Dark (D) during our last hunt was retired at the time of the Beckoning and would not be taken along.
At least to my understanding, unfortunately the timing of the event killed Daniel off as the text was applied, whilst the other bonuses imparted by the event were set to come into effect upon departure from the settlement at the end of the phase.
A truly unfortunate loss at the 11th hour of this settlement! Daniel had carried so much of our damage output for the last couple of Lantern Years!

With our attention fixed upon the soft glow at the distant horizon, I did feel a little unsure as to what to do with our last settlement phase, but ultimately started it off by using the Pituitary Gland we still had in storage after all these Lantern Years to make a Red Power Core.
I should also mention at this stage that I have and will be playing all Power Cores akin to how the Green Power Core from the Screaming Nukealope is set up as, i.e. with 4 half affinities of the respective color and the lantern keyword.

As far as I am aware of it, it has been confirmed that these changes will be applied to these items with the upcoming reprints of older expansions. And I believe these changes make power cores a lot more desirable and usable as a whole!

I’d almost forgot Ash and Irradiated as well, but he rolled a 7 which was just 1 too low to gain an extra STR.

After some long and hard thinking I came to the conclusion that we probably could spend our endeavors on other things rather than make another one-of power core .. but .. I did kinda just want to do it anyhow.
With that I had set my mind to special innovate a VERY late Scrap Smelting (I) with 3 Black Lichen as stand-in organs. We then smelted 1 whole Iron with an 8 and built the Blue Power Core as a mark of triumph!

I would have liked to build the Tyrant Slayer bow as well, but I should have probably leaned more into Dragon Kings and nuclear weaponry in that case.

For our final endeavor of the campaign I had considered activating Shrine (I) at first, you know, my favorite thing to do! But with the sheer amount of resources still lying around in storage I was well aware that there might be a more sensible way to go about this.
And whilst I did doubt that armor would do all that much going forward, there was always a chance that it just might give us that smallest of edges, so I spent our final endeavor to make a ton of Leather!

With 14 Leather, 2 scrap and 2 bones I built 2 full Leather Armor sets for our back-up people. There was also a collection of 5 Perfect Hides we can make a perfect set of Rawhide Armor from.
I also spent the remaining Pelt in storage to complete a Screaming Armor and made 3 more Dried Acanthus for good measure.

After going through the piles of mostly low-power gear I noticed that we were also short 1 lantern from being able to send everybody to the fight, and the easiest way to get another one without spending an endeavor was to just build the 2nd Dashing Reaper.
So with a couple of extra Leather we used the Gnawed Gastrolith to build the extravagant lantern dagger as well.

I did also remember that we still had 1 more Love Juice to use up and figured we might as well.
..
Oh!
Oooh!!!
..
A 9 and a 10! That gave us another savior!?

Given the circumstances I did not experiment but instead chose for her to be a Blue Savior – a girl called Aquamarine. With the additional LCK she was set up to take Daniel’s vacant spot in the line up!

And with that the survivors were ready to get up and leave their settlement behind for good to follow the glowing forms of their desires.

As the settlement emptied out under Daniel’s watchful gaze, I did get to apply several bonuses to all living non-retired survivors, depending on the principles we had chosen over the course of the campaign.

So, for the Bloody Shallows we got:
+1STR
+1ACC
Survival to cap (11)
Remove a permanent severe injury.

The initial challengers:
Alice – purple (Dragon Armor, Piercing Claws)
Ash – green (Screaming Armor, Atomic Lance)
Aquamarine – blue (Alpha bits, Vandal Broadaxe)
Oak – yellow (Leather Armor, Vandal Sledge)

The stats in the pictures reflect the on arrival stats for our first 4 combatants. And whilst I still had serious doubts about the chances for this group against the Parasite Queen, none of them would be going down without a fight!
Especially Oak, whose arm had suspiciously regrown, yet he was ready to wield the Vandal Sledge once more for the upcoming fight and that was all we needed to not question it any further!

And thus we were ready to face the Parasite Queen.
Surely all these limbs were indeed our own. Especially the newer ones.

Even on first glance, the Parasite Queen has stats befitting of a Finale fight: 10MOV, 25TGH and an eye-watering line up of AI cards as well: 6B/6A/12L.
To make matters worse, she/it has 4 traits, none of which being Life, so you do have to wound off that entire 24-card-deck and deal with all the pitfalls that might bring with it!
The first trait listed for the fight is Omnipresence, which will appear as a trigger on various cards. Once the effect activates, the large 3×3 Host of Hands terrain tiles the monster adds during set up will begin moving around in one of two randomly determined directions. Should any Host of Hands collide with destructible terrain or minions during this movement it will destroy them. Afterwards the Parasite Queen appears on a random Host of Hands – reforming from the squirming mass of loose flesh and digits all around you.
The 2nd trait is Renegade Flesh. This offers survivors a chance to get rid of any parasites they might have gained. You can be sure that you’ll be getting your fill of parasites during this fight and this represents a somewhat desperate attempt to get rid of some of them.
The 3rd trait, Manifold Horrors will turn your survivors into wet paper towels if they collide with either the Parasite Queen or a Host of Hands. They will just die, flat-out, with no way of preventing it.
And finally there is your one shining ray of hope: Melody of Heroes. As long as at least 1 survivor remains on the board, you may embolden up to 3 times at the start of each of the survivor’s turns.

Now that sounds like a lot to deal with already – and who doesn’t like insta-kill mechanics like that one – but there are a few more wrinkles to consider still.
First and foremost is the Protean keyword found on most (all-but-4-ish??) Hit Location cards. This will be the major puzzle you will have to solve if you want to have any chance at success at all. Because unless you have a means to ignore this keyword (which you have a chance of getting from drawing hit location cards and the fight itself) any wound attempts made against Protean hit locations will outright fail.
Here is also your friendly reminder to revisit the rules for trading resources between survivors during a showdown. Even the monster’s rule book is trying to nudge you to revisit those few lines in the core book (it’s on page 57 btw).

But with all that out of the way, we might as well finally get to it.

With 24 cards in the Parasite Queen’s AI deck, my 4 survivors did not have the 18+ courage needed to meet the threshold (more like .. 0 – there was 2 courage spread across all 8 living survivors) thus the monster got the first activation of the fight.
Antibiosis – the first legendary AI. We did however not have a survivor with 3 or more parasites for the card to target and it did trigger the basic action instead. This would have replaced a survivor with an Illuminated Figur – fun!

Of course, this basic action was also set up hit like a truck: at 10SPD, 2+ACC and 6DMG per hit, this synchronic attack with a weird cone shape was pretty dangerous and we were not placed in a way that let us outrun this one either.
Even if I chose Alice and had her run into the corner she still did not get out of the wave pattern!
8 hits on 3+ brutalized her, forcing her to take 3 severe injuries upon the very first monster action. It was the body severe that killed her instantly.

Our best chances of wounding the monster clearly lay with Oak and Aquamarine. So, with the words of the age-old adage in my ear – no fear! – Oak dashed into the monster’s blind spot and swung to hit the major leagues with the Vandal Sledge.
He hit the Aphonic Mouth, which was, of course, a Protean hit location with a reflex. Oddly fitting, the reflex caused his own arm to dismember again.., you know, the one that had mysteriously grown back just prior to the fight.., as the tissue in his body sought a new master.

After the Parasite Queen had slowly shuffled back to the center of the board, Aquamarine stepped up to the fight – she hit the matriarch twice and there even was a hit location in there without Protean! Sadly it was also without a crit spot.
I did not read the cards fully – foolishly! – and resolved the Protean card first imparting an Enteric Gigas upon her, which would rupture and kill her in 2 turns! It was ready to blow!
With her lifetime limited all of a sudden she surged and hit the Metachronal Toupha, which not only activated the parasitic arm of hers, but also set off Omnipresence.

And the random direction was determined to be push (yellow) and with no dashes remaining, both Oak and Aquamarine were swallowed by the myriad of hands and torn to pieces for later reassembly.
Funnily enough, this did return the Vandal Broadaxe back to settlement storage – which meant somebody should be able to depart with it again!

Ash was not be dissuaded from attacking by this wave of death, though! Keenly he dashed into a position to slam and skewer the Parasite Queen with the help of the Horripilation dice. 3 hits found 3 more Protean hit locations, though the monster moved away after the first failed hit and the rest thankfully got cancelled.

Copperfish could do little but reposition after the monster had moved so far away and wait for an opportunity to arise.

24 cards in the deck, the Parasite Queen first put Behavioral Mandate into play – a mood!
Whilst this card remained in play we could no longer trade any resources. And whilst it was going to get discarded once we had amassed 10+ parasites I already kinda knew that wasn’t realistically going to happen. Especially as the Parasite Queen got to draw a 2nd AI card as well: Apoptosis.

Well.., we weren’t going to get close enough to outrun that attack after the monster’s movement during the last turn.
The Synchronic Attack hit Ash 8 times (3+) and Copperfish 5 times.
Due to the parasite and the after damage trigger, Ash died instantly as his body fully gave in to the invader.
Funnily enough, Copperfish survived his incoming hits with a dodge and the ability of his chest plate!

Not giving in, I emboldened the remaining 3 survivors onto the field and noticed that the Nuclear Knuckle could not be activated due to a shortage of red affinities facing right! Oh no!

Pine was wielding the Vandal Broadaxe again and he wasted no time and struck at the monster’s blind spot .. and he hit the trap!?
Compared to a lot of the things the Parasite Queen does, her/it’s trap is definitely on the lower end of your worries. The 2 parasites Pine gained included a Lingua Louse, which spread a -1SPD token at the end of his acts to all other survivors.

As we were very much in a state of “might as well” at this point, Copperfish moved into the monster’s facing and just attacked her/it head on! He hit once – the Rippling Waves – which were not protean(!!!) and the madlad wounded on 14+ with sharp!? And he gained a Flash of Rebellion status card as well just to show off how the team needed to actually get around protean. He did however low-roll the 1D5 courage (just a single 1) which still triggered a bold streak in him gaining him a +1STR-token.
Copperfish truly was the hero of the settlement!

Inspired, Lilly moved around the monster and blindly threw her Founding Stone.., and she hit the Impacted Jaws!? Lilly was torn apart but the “team” had gained a theoretically most valuable reprieve: we could ignore Protean until the end of the next round!

Copperfish surged and hit the monster twice more. Unfortunately he had to chose between getting hit with a basic or death and it ended up being death as he was unable to wound this time.

Gibbralta took the chance to attack as well, wounding only on 10s and unsurprisingly she gained a parasite from the Gestures of Affection before she had to prevail or die. I chose for her to get knocked down with 0 survival left.

This Duplicitous Manus she had just gained from this hit location – grabbing on to the Nuclear Knuckle no less – then caused a severe body injury as it punched her in the boob.
She used her Dried Acanthus to prevent it though.

22 cards remaining, the next and most likely last AI card we’d get to see was the Gaze of Renunciation.

We started by performing Omnipresence. Moving along the yellow arrows again the monster reappeared directly before Pine and Gibbralta.
Pine quickly dashed behind the monster before Gibbralta’s essence began throwing fits within her. Her insides roiled up causing another severe body (3) and waist (4) injury each.

Somehow still alive, Pine attempted another attack, which he failed miserably. And it couldn’t have been a much worse spot either – he was presented with 6DMG to 6 random hit locations in return.
Ouch.
He died twice to both a 1 at the head and waist.

Before the round ended the Duplicitous Manus punched Gibbralta in the boob again for another severe chest injury – 2 bleed.
And with that she bled out and the “fight” was officially over.

As the last of our survivors vanished into the endlessly flowing mass of limbs, consciousness slipped away as they felt a strong sense of belonging.

2 wounds inflicted from our starting point didn’t feel all that bad I do have to admit. Funnily enough, getting defeated here also does not actually lead to a Game Over but the rare, occasional, “The End”.

Losing against the Parasite Queen does have its consequences though – for our next campaign we are “forced” to use the Manifold Spread Pillar card as the influence of the Parasite Queen is spreading from our lost survivors – they have become fresh seedbeds for many different kinds of limbs.

I am curious to find out how gaining parasites during Lantern Year by Lantern Year gameplay will influence the campaign. As long as you don’t die you can potentially gain a decent bunch of extra resources via severe injuries.
And we are definitely playing with this Pillar for Season 4!

Overall, whilst I do have a bunch of thoughts regarding what went right and what went wrong with this settlement, I will save those for the epilogue I plan to write up after GenCon.
I will just say that I am glad that I made it all the way to the Finale even if we did not really manage to do much here. This being my first attempt at fighting the Parasite Queen myself gave me a decent first impression I would say.

I do also already have an idea of what I want to do for season 4, and let’s just say it won’t involve waiting for the bees (unless they release like, next month).

***

But there is one more thing I wanted to talk about today:
I’ve regularly mentioned that I am typically playing another KD:M campaign with a/some friend/s “on the side” and this time we had managed to get to the Parasite Queen as well just recently.

And to my and my friend’s shock: we actually managed to win.

After a grueling fight, involving 26(!) deaths, our PotLantern non-arc settlement prevailed against this at times seemingly insurmountable foe.
We started out with Screaming God, Sunstalker and Blacksmith gear and ended up wave assaulting the monster with Bone Daggers and F&T attacks wounding only on Lantern 10s.

This was mainly possible due to the settlement having both Collective Toil and just over 50 population as we arrived at the fight.
Survival of the Fittest, Barbaric and the Occular Parasites milestone all added to a comfy base stat line of 2/4/2 for most survivors, not that 4STR mattered here, with Graves fueling the way towards this final confrontation.
We did spend the last 4 Lantern Years preparing for the final fight by making copious amounts of Survivor Lanterns (remember that the gear you can build isn’t limited by the number of cards you have for them – see the official FAQ). And by the time our final develop step had ended we had 41 Survivor Lanterns to distribute and were set to send everybody into the fight who could even remotely lift a Bone Dagger.

My personal highlight of the fight from the monster point of view was us fully rolling the 108SPD attack once (in two batches of 54 dice at a time) against a single survivor – 21 misses on 3+ – that was a crisp 87 severe injury rolls for that guy!
Overall, I will say we were more preoccupied with the parasites the monster was spreading throughout our survivors than the AI cards the Parasite Queen was playing, although all the cards that just ignored armor were a little annoying, especially as they started looping in the AI deck as it got smaller from us managing to deal wounds.
There was also the turn in which one parasite wiped out all the stats on our genetically altered super-survivor with 10EVA (One-Two & Sleeping Virus Flower shenanigans over 2 Lantern Decades) – 22 stat points gone in an instant.

And my highlight from the survivor POV would be us hitting the Parasite Queen with an ancient Sword Scab for 3 wounds at once – cumbersome and it needed a Lantern 10 to wound – it was a clutch roll starting the second half of the fight off with a bang!
That particular weapon had been built right after our Pariah Lvl1 fight!

But honestly, especially as the gear grids devolved further and further, every landed hit, and even more-so every wound that got through on Lantern 10s or critical wounds were loudly cheered at.
In that regard the fight was incredible and truly something special to behold, a feeling which surely got amplified by the fact that we pulled through and actually won in the end against all odds!

This does, however also mean that this monster can feel like a brick wall at times. Especially when all your attacks get swallowed by Protean hit locations and you just don’t manage to wound the couple spots that don’t have it. In that sense, just from comparing the fight the last survivors of the Bloody Shallows had with this successful attempt you could definitely call the failure miserable to a degree.
Of course preparation – both to have the sheer numbers of survivors as well as more weapons that can actually wound the monster can and will go a long way as well.

For us, the MVP weapons turned out to be a set of paired Lion Beast Katar which a couple of eager Duplicitous Manus-es kept returning into our stash over and over again.
Those, and I loath to say it, Bone Daggers pulled a lot of weight as well.
In general you will want medium to high SPD weaponry here and that is going to be difficult for a lot of veterans of the game, I would expect.

We also used no scouting whatsoever – which turned out to be a blessing in disguise (I had forgotten about the HL cards that draw AI when revealed early between these attempts).

As for quarries this settlement hunted White Lion, Screaming Antelope (which we only fought once in LY29 as a Nukealope Lvl3), Flower Knight, Sunstalker and Screaming God as quarry monsters, with Pariah, Slenderman and the Hand as our nemesis monsters.

Much like with the Squire Campaign, I feel like I can’t quite express how happy I am that this worked out the way it did, and the only thing that saddens me a little is that it wasn’t for Season 3!

***

With not 1 but 2 fights against the Parasite Queen finished, one way or another the world of Kingdom Death is going to move on for the time being.
I will however quickly take the time to mention the challenge levels that have been shared with the community for the Parasite Queen.

These 3 all come from an official Team Death member over on the Lantern’s Reign discord and were used during testing of the fight.
Whilst actually winning this fight at all is already a tremendous achievement that truly needs a whole settlement’s contribution should you thirst for an even greater challenge here are the 3 “Levels” of the Parasite Queen.

Lvl1: add the Resilient event trait: the monster cannot suffer additional or automatic wounds – say good bye to Founding Stones, Devastating X, Surpass X or Counterweighted Axe.

Lvl2: add the Frenzied Berserker trait: +2 AI card draws per monster activation.

Lvl3: add the Vengeful event trait: if a wound attempt surpasses the monster’s TGH by 6+, the attacker gains the priority target token and after the attack has been fully resolved draw AI. Limited to once per attack.

And yes, these do stack up – so Lvl2 means adding both Frenzied Berserker AND Resilient.

There was talk about a bounty for a King’s Coin should you manage to defeat the Parasite Queen at Challenge Lvl3 with no major mistakes and document it – ideally via video or stream, but write ups have been considered as well.
Unfortunately the window for this challenge is almost over already – basically being only until GenCon, but we had heard at some point that it might get extended with less exclusive prizes than a King’s Coin.

Personally I had considered trying this with the survivors that managed to fell the Gold Smoke Knight earlier this year, but I fear that they would just get torn to shreds really quickly with not much of a settlement as back-up.

Maybe Season 4 will get there.

***

And with that I we are almost done for today.

We are headed into GenCon week and I am sure we are going to both get some beautiful new products as well as juicy new details on Dead Armor or upcoming expansions.

Right now as far as new releases are concerned, I am expecting a new Legendary Character box for Hollow – the name Lyla has been used by a Team Death member over on the discord; a new Survivors of Death box (#3) as well as 1 or 2 new Indom weapons – Screaming God and hopefully something like Sunstalker or something really out there like another nemesis monster.
Or.., forget about all of that – its going to be for King, obviously.

As for sneak peeks both the Wise One campaign as well as any pictures of Dead Armor will surely turn some heads and I wouldn’t be surprised if we got another secret preview showdown – Honeycomb Weaver would make the most sense for that, I think.

But I will be back later this week with my own coverage from afar like I did last year. The Feline Entity will surely help out as well.

As always, thank you very much for your time, have any of your campaigns made it to the Parasite Queen by now? How was your fight against her/it? Did you win? Lose? Have you heard the Beckoning call? Have you felt your squirming entrails pulling you towards your destination?
Amathul