FAQ

Frequently asked questions

General

Q: Is this really necessary?
A: Probably not. But I want a place to be able to point to for certain things. And I figured I might as well collect some of my own rules queries here too.
Q: How old is the Feline Entity?
A. She turned 14 in August(2025).
Q: How do you shuffle your settlement event deck?
A: I give the deck a shuffle to the best of my abilities and then roll a die to determine how many cards I discard off the top. Employing two forms of randomness feels better than just shuffling.
I still got the Dark Trader to show up 7 (!) times for my first People of the Stars though.
Q: What’s your favorite monster (visual design/concept)?
A: So far: the Dragon King. Limiting myself to 3 – I’d also have to add the Phoenix and the Sunstalker. Node 3 supremacy.
From the unreleased expansions, I am currently looking forward to the Screaming God, Honeycomb Weaver and Oblivion Mosquito the most(updated end of 2025).
This is all likely subject to change.
Q: Any monsters you dislike?
A: The Phoenix gameplay is hard to get into, although I do want to like the fight.
I’m also not much of a fan of the Gorm or Frogdog aesthetics, but I get they are good expansions from a gameplay stand-point. The same will likely be true for the Pariah.
And, I have to admit, the Gryphon does look boring to me. We’ll see how it will shape up all in all though.
Also subject to change.
Q: You don’t own the Gambler’s Chest Expansion (GCE) yet?
A: Nope. I wasn’t a Kickstarter Backer and it’s still too expensive at the moment to buy just like that – though I am keeping a look-out for a juicy Black Friday discount, maybe this year or the next.
But honestly, I am more focused on the Inverted Mountain expansions and Campaigns of Death for the time being.
Q: Any purchase recommendations if I want to expand my game beyond Core?
A: From a “value for money” standpoint: you should just get the GCE. All the content it features is incredible and enriches the game by a lot. I’ve watched a lot of the content there is for the GCE and there’s enough positive feedback going around for me to feel confident in echoing this statement without actually owning the box myself. Of course, “being able to afford it” is an important point to consider with any expenditure of such a size. And it should be stated that it will add significant overhead to managing your survivors and settlements. It represents for all intents and purposes a form of “advanced Kingdom Death: Monster”.

Aside from that what I would currently call the “Big 4” are all solid choices.
Dragon King and Sunstalker each offer an alternate campaign to play.
Black Knight is the only other Node 3 Nemesis out there currently and has the 5 year Vignette (which will likely have you question your sanity admittedly) as well. It offers an unprecedented amount of loot for a nemesis and brings along 3 armor sets for you to go chasing after.
Finally Frogdog is a beefy N1 quarry monster, which you will likely fight a lot, with an extra Lvl3 special option featuring its own (very powerful!) armor set.

Whilst I won’t include them in my “Big 4” because I can’t quite tell how much “defining weight” throughout a campaign they will actually have, the Red Witches (and Pariah) are also shaping up to be exceptional expansions to get (especially with their interlocking interactions).
Red Witches also offer a modern alternative to the often frowned upon King’s Man.

Gorm and Frogdog (and Crimson Croc from the GCE for that matter) do get a special mention though, as you are likely going to fight a lot of Node 1 monsters – so having some variety for that particular node goes a long way.

My generalized personal standpoint: you should get what looks coolest to you. EoD1 era stuff is a bit dated at the moment, true, but if you really like the look of any one thing – pick that.
The Lonely Tree and Spidicules are probably the 2 expansions to think about a bit longer before jumping the gun, but both will likely see major upgrades with CoD and we know for a fact that Spidicules will have somewhat of a prime spot in that big ol’ box.
Q: Any purchase recommendations for White Boxes?
A: Get what looks and/ or sounds cool to you!
But to try and be at least a little more informative (most of my recommendations are going to be gameplay centric):
If you are only looking for gameplay content and do not care one bit about the models: White Boxes will generally not be worth it from a cost perspective!
However, there are a few boxes that seem to get universal recommendations, so, for arguments sake: Ringtail Vixen, Percival and Fade are all good pick-ups should you have an opportunity for it.
The latter two have been made available as Pillar Survivors, a new product-line, likely as permanent additions to the shop from summer/fall 2025 and going forward. This means they are going to add a milestone to any campaigns they are used in that trigger the additions of their respective hunt events and content.

Aside from those, the new-ish Legendary Character boxes – most prominently Lantern Armor Aya offer good content additions for your game (whilst being somewhat expensive at $77 comparatively), but Willow and Skrelle are universally good pick-ups for around $30.
10th Anniversary Survivors offers beautiful sculpts for the starting four in mid-game gear and a bunch of patterns for $60.
15th Anniversary Survivors add 4 INCREDIBLE minis as well as a bunch of upgraded iron gear that ranges from decent to pretty busted if you manage to jump through a couple of hoops for $75. This box features a new terrain tile, innovation and addition to the Blacksmith – yes! no patterns this time.
The Killennium Butcher Vignette has some of the best character minis together with a bunch of fun gear and a fully fledged storyline including a little comic and 8(!) different endings.
Honorable mentions should go to the Till Death Do Us Part whitebox – featuring a 5th experimental principle “Bonding” which you would gain after innovating Partnership. (Edit Jan 25: I did not know about this until very recently.)

For everything else, the Vignettes, Echoes of Death 1 to 4, Survivors of Death 1 & 2, the Indominable Survivors, the Pillar Survivors and Wanderers, as well as any Pin-ups etc, you should just get what you like and can reasonably afford.
Don’t worry too much about the online consensus!

I will say, if you had to limit yourself to a single ~$30-ish White Box and you can get your hands on a copy, getting the Ringtail Vixen – the one with the bookmark – is always going to be great, giving you the ability of avoiding that dreaded roll of 1 on intimacy once per campaign, be it for the very first attempt at babies or any one other bad roll later down the line.
Otherwise, Skrelle offers a settlement event with an innovation that doesn’t break the game and offers a small, yet decent power-up to any campaign, also adding more value to thePictograph innovation.
Q: What about the Sun-line of White Boxes?
A: White Sun Lion Armor Erza, Screaming Sun Armor Lucy, Sunlantern Armor Aya, as well as 2025’s Priestess Percival release are a bit of a different beast compared to standard White Boxes. They are all means to either overcome some of the particular limitations the player is faced with in the People of the Sun campaign from the Sunstalker expansion or make less utilized systems more appealing to interact with – mainly the inability to wear heavy armor due to the heat they live in – and these boxes will rise or fall in relevance depending of how much you like playing that particular campaign.
I, personally, found that I really enjoy PotSun campaigns, which is why I tried my best to get all 4 of these boxes during Fall 2025.
But if you don’t particularly like PotSun to begin with, I doubt these boxes will change your mind.
Q:About your painting..?
A: I’m still very much learning how to take pictures that work best for the way how I like to paint my models, but I do think I’ve gotten a little better.
Whilst I have painted stuff before KD:M – see the next question – I have relatively few hours on my brush, so to speak.

I will say, I think that I finally understood that painting models for the camera is very different from painting them for the table. And I do like painting stuff for the table predominately.

Still, for the time being its about improving and I believe I am slowly managing to do so.
For what it’s worth I am really proud of my Lunar Aya, Indomitable Survivor Domino and my Jackel for survivors, as well as my Phoenix and Flower Knight for monsters.
Q: Did you do any other painting?
A: I have a (mostly) fully painted army of Chaos Space Marines + Chaos Deamons (from a slightly older WH40k edition though.. I wanna say 6th?). They are Word Bearers with a bunch of Cultists, Daemon Engines, Khorne Daemons and a Shadowsword.
I also fully painted my set for Bloodrage (board game by Eric M. Lang, CMON). I’m really proud of those figures. I might take pictures of them at some point.

Rules

A fair warning: I don’t consider myself overly knowledgeable when it comes to the games’ rules and with my emphasis on theme I generally believe there are cases where players as a group should just decide what to do as long as they remain consistent afterwards.
For now all of these will just be rules questions I had for myself and looked up possible answers for and that seemed to lead me down rabbit holes of sorts.
Answers listed here will effectively be crowdsourced from the internet and/or Lantern’s Reign in particular.

Q.: Can you dodge the severe injury caused by the Butcher’s Bite.
A.: General consensus seems to be “No”, as the timing for a dodge would happen after the ‘Before Damage’ effect is applied. This might still be a case of rai (rules as intended) vs raw (rules as written).
I have been playing it as “you can’t dodge”.
Q.: Does the effect of Spiked Buckler (When this blocks a hit, roll 1D10. On a 9+ the monster suffers a wound.) count as damage dealt with the weapon for weapon proficiency.
A.: The current online consensus seems to favor “Yes, you can gain weapon proficiency from this.”
I have been playing it as the opposite however.
Q.: Can ‘Novel’ Weapon Proficiencies – Cleaver, Sword (Willow), Twilight Sword, Katana – be passed down with family.
A.: Yes. Parents are able to pass these on to their children.
As for the Twilight Sword the main problem would be to acquire the sword for the child as well due to it being a cursed weapon.
Q.: Does Synchronized Strike SFA work against monsters of larger sizes (i.e. 3×3 or 4×4)?
A.: I have not come across a truly satisfactory answer to this myself yet.
However, I assume I put too much emphasize on the little diagram on the card as quite a few Tactics cards rely fully on them for their set-up.
Q.: Do you gain the benefit from your Death Principle when a survivor ceases to exist? Does Graves trigger under more circumstances than Cannibalize?
A,; As the FAQ the official website for KD:M states: “Do not gain the benefits of your settlement’s Death Principle from survivors that are exiled, leave the settlement or cease to exist. [..]”
Q.: Should you microwave your Dragon King?
A.: I am piggy-backing off the official FAQ here, and I would not recommend it. It gains +1DMG after all.
..
Don’t do it.