It is time for us to get into the Knowledges for Ambitionism, however, as written in part 30, one of the knowledges we get is drafted rather than fixed. What is meant by drafted is we gain this knowledge in a similar way to how knowledges are distributed to the Forum; one takes the knowledge deck draws either 3, 3 to 6 or 6 knowledges depending on the Rank I roll and then selects one to become the Ambitionism Survivor's Tenet Knowledge. This system is one that is used not just in the Forum, but also for Innovations and Romantic Principle Fighting Arts in the No Arc Survivor games. It's a staple of deck builders because it creates a certain amount of what we'd call “Input Randomness” before giving the player a choice. We don't get to select exactly what we want here, but we do get to make a choice from some options. With an 8+ roll and a total Collective Cognition of 37 the choice gets even wider because we get to “Tutor” (a mechanic named after Magic: The Gathering's “Demonic Tutor” as the first high profile card that searches an entire deck of options for one specific card of the player's choice). Giving players more options for a choice is powerful, our greatest tool against the foes of Kingdom Death is options and choices, we get to make them, the monsters we fight against do not. So being able to select your Tenet Knowledge makes this the single strongest possible Tenet in the entire game, it could be absolutely anything, even a boat!

This means that there can never be a definitive right answer for what this Tenet should be, it depends on what knowledges you have in your deck, which depends on what philosophies your settlement has and what rolls your survivors made when levelling up. It also depends on what your settlement needs, what its strengths and weaknesses are and the specific needs of your hunt party. Ambitionism represents the peak of the philosophy mountain for your settlement, Ambitionism survivors should be the very best, arguing to be included in every showdown because of the raw power they bring to the table. So with that written, lets look at some of the top candidates for that slot and thank you to those of you who responded with comments in Part 30, I really appreciated it because honestly the response was far short of what I hoped it would be. I hoped for conversations and sharing of experiences to happen there because honestly Kingdom Death: Monster has grown so exponentially in size and complexity that it's incredibly difficult to hold everything in my head. At this point I keep having to pay really close attention to everything when playing and even then I have to reacquaint myself with the various knowledges as I unlock them because not only are they all unique, but many of them have multiple levels, which adds more things to remember or look at.

But regardless, there was some responses and I appreciate those of you who took the time to do so, it made this part feel a little less like I was alone in the dark with just my lantern and no-one else to watch my back.

More Slots Knowledges

As colben wrote, Potentia Est from Romantic and Gastromancer/Second Stomach from Gourmandism are the picks for the most powerful and useful options out there. Potentia Est gives us a total +1 Knowledge Slot (You have 5 Slots, but Potentia Est takes one of those) and Second Stomach trades a Knowledge Slot for a Gear Slot (though this slot cannot make any affinity connections as it is disconnected from the gear grid). One of the greatest limitations that games in the Dungeon Crawler genre (of which Boss Battlers are a sub-category) is the amount of 'things' a single unit can bring along with them. In the original Warhammer Quest for example, Wizards tend to go from being frail, squishy damage dealing supports to absolute powerhouses as they level up because they get access to spells, which is a whole additional set of options that other classes do not get. Choices and options are very powerful and having an additional slot for two of the key areas where we get to customise our survivors performance cannot ever be left out of discussions about power. It's the reason why the Romantic Principle is infinitely stronger than Barbaric in both of the current survivor progression systems. Barbaric offers +1 strength, which is not bad, but it's something we can get from so many other sources, Romantic always offers more choices and potential development routes instead. In fact, I think that if I ever sat down to do a Knowledges Tier List video series it would be an immediate “S Tier” ranking for both of these two.

However, there is one other member of the “more slots” knowledge club that I think at least goes ahead of Gastromancer and that is Marrowism's Osteophage. Even though it is the core tenet of Marrowism and normally I would avoid tenets because they come packaged with survivors of that philosophy I would still strongly consider it here as Osteophage is so strong that it has; in essence, eliminated Graves from my Arc Survivor Death Principle options in the same way that Romantic eliminated Barbaric (This is very fixable Team Death, just give us a philosophy unlocked with each principle). Most tenet knowledges are not going to appear on this list because they're already tenets you can get elsewhere, but Osteophage is absolutely an exception to this.

Departing without Armor or a Shield gives 6 armor points to all hit locations, that means I have 5 or 6 free gear slots that are no longer dedicated to protecting each hit location. I can put more items and weapons into the grid instead and explore combinations that would normally be too risky to run. Osteophage is also supported by Marrowism's Stone Skin, which means each injury level is a hard 'stop' for all damage inflicted by hits. No monster can kill a Stone Skin survivor in a single blow because they cannot progress damage past the Light injury level box, the next hit is also completely absorbed by the heavy injury box. Oh and also a bone resource for an Osteophage survivor represents a full heal by consuming a bone resource once per lantern year. It can be incredibly difficult for monsters to crack open a Marrowism survivor, even more so if they are an Ambitionism survivor cosplaying as one.

More Stats Knowledges

Survivor Attributes are the other place where power bases can be built to scale survivors to ridiculous degrees and nothing compares to the poster child for this Dark Impulse III (Homicidalism) another tenet knowledge on this list that is so powerful and easily abused it has been called out by Adam and Team Death for a deserved nerf in a future update pack. Dark Impulse on survivors without Homicisalism is one of those combinations that never should have happened in the first place. Dark Impulse is so strong that I do not think it should be in the Knowledge deck in order to stop it landing on any other survivors.

Digestion (Gourmandism) is a slower and fairer version of Dark Impulse, you can only gain attributes by archiving positive attribute tokens and you can only do this once per lantern year, but depending on what happens to Dark Impulse this may be the replacement I look at, especially when combined with various cards like the Fish of Abundance promotional gear (Lunar Knight) that gives a +Luck token when departing.

Fingernail Door (Dreamism)

I've not covered Dreamism yet (it's coming after Championism and before Gatherism), but I absolutely want to mention it here for Dream Keeper campaigns as this is another way to increase luck on a survivor at the cost of turning the first lantern 10 into a 1. A temporary penalty for a permanent increase is almost always an excellent trade and Luck tends to be the best offensive attribute option for survivors due to how it steps around reactions and offers additional bonuses.

Lanterns' Souls (Lanternism)

Most of Lanternism is intensely parasitic in that it generates and relies upon Death Tokens, a type of token that is not often generated elsewhere in the game pieces. Lanterns' Souls is an exception to this as it simply gives +1 affinity of your choice upon departing. There's a bunch of powerful gear cards that have steep affinity requirements, such as the old reliable Blue Charm and having affinities built into the survivor once again helps us get around that old gear slot limitation. The flexibility of choosing each time you depart really helps ground this one, though like most Tier 1 choices, it's not as powerful as the higher tier options by design.

Aggressive Knowledges

Razor's Edge (Homicidalism)

Suggested by A Warm, Awful Feeling this is the kind of suggestion which I wanted to see when I asked for them as I had not remotely thought about this one. When I went to explore it however, Razor's Edge offered a build around knowledge that could be very interesting. Razor's Edge is asking for players to sacrifice protection in exchange for Devastating 1. While I am of the opinion that this one should have been Devastating 2, there is still a lot that can be done with Devastating 1. But before we get to that, the major consideration is how we protect such a squishy, reckless survivor in the first place. Marrowism's Stone Skin offers the first clear route for defense because it means that the first 1 or 2 hits will be soaked entirely by the injury boxes. Combine that with ways of generating deflect, block, dodge and passive evasion and we can be a lot harder to break than it would first look on paper.

Offensively the most interesting things you can do with Devastating 1 on any weapon is to combine it with higher speeds, which gives devastating a multiplicative impact. For example; four hits could become 8 wounds, but with just four wound triggers for Razor's Edge dangerous observation progression. Savage is the other neat trick we can grab here, because while Savage is mostly a scuffed, weaker cousin of Devastating it does stack with Devastating to generate that extra wound on a critical wound. So we could take a savage weapon, combine it with some extra luck and then deal (2X+1) wounds per attack (assuming we score at least one critical wound). I'm not sure how up the tier list this one would end up, it's not as powerful as what Verminism offers, but it was interesting to explore it and create a vicious survivor who would explode like a balloon filled with gore if the monster managed to score a single severe injury on them. How high can you get Systemic Pressure? Turns out quite high if you try hard enough. (Also if you want to be more sensible, you can lock Razor's Edge behind Void, more on Void a bit later).

High Roller (Dreamism)

Again I'm going to be brief with this one as I've not covered it in full, but High Roller offers another way of protecting a survivor in a unique fashion. We get to steal a d10 used to attack us, which cancels the attack and gives us a die to use later in our own attack. This is solid for tanks, but it's at its absolute best when used by bruisers (Tank/Damage dealing hybrids) because they're looking to trade blows rather than spending their activation primarily on activating a defensive ability.

Frogkick (Frogdog)

I love Fist & Tooth synergies almost as much as I love Perfect Hit ones, Frogkick is not only solidly powerful and will start working for a survivor immediately, it's also just something I find hilarious as the artwork depicts the survivor drop kicking a monster. Sometimes I consider running a settlement where everyone takes on the monsters with no weapons other than Fist & Tooth and if I did, this would totally be part of it. I'm gonna open a can of whoop-ass on any monster brave enough to enter the squared circle!

Mirror Eyes (Verminism)

Let's be honest, if you have played with this philosophy then you already knew that some Verminism knowledges would be appearing in this list. In fact I've had to be restrained and not put most of them on here, I'll stick with two but I'll also point out that Hissing Arms III is also absolutely nuts. It's the core tenet of Verminism and they already use it very effectively. So I would pick it, but I prefer it to be on verminism survivors due to it always being part of that package.

Mirror Eyes on the other hand is a bit more of an interesting option as your tenet because then you can look to find other knowledges that increase Perfect hit range in order to really lean into that aspect of Verminism from the start.

Queen of Hands (Verminism)

I really like this knowledge, it's amazing, powerful, unique in what it asks of you and a lot of fun. You bet I'm going to pick this if I see it and then do my best to really leverage its design from the start. It's one of the most exciting and thrilling speed pay offs in the game.

Protective Knowledges

Unyielding (Faceism)

Damage prevention is good, especially when it's not tied to gear and can be stacked onto other protective elements such as other damage preventation. Unyielding is one of those knowledges that is just a really unflashy but powerful work horse for front line tanks/bruisers because of how it scales against stronger monsters. It cancels out an entire +1 Damage for an L2+ monster and it gets even better the more speed the monsters have because it's applying its static protection against each individual die.

Void (Homicidalism)

What a surprise that a Homicidalism knowledge has turned up in the list again! Turns out that when you give players who sacrifice their spare survivors for additional value a knowledge that's based around that they do broken stuff with your system. Void is a little bit different from the other two in that it is a protective knowledge that allows you to lock yourself off from Intimidate actions or disorders harming you in exchange for being unable to gain knowledges, observations, survival or insanity. It's not as strong as the Gorment Mask, but it does not take up a gear slot and ask you to rely on an early to mid game armor set (or mixed set) in order to make use of it. The big trick here is of course using this in combination with knowledges that have dangerous observations, picking up Void and then digging your way through various Optimism knowledges is another excellent foundation for building combos on top of.

Hardy Ego (Impermanism)

This is an interesting fall back pick, because if the Knowledges you drew were not great, Hardy Ego offers an additional two picks after you suffer a brain trauma. This returns to that concept of having more options and while these two options may not work out in the end, it is still something to consider if all your other options are not providing power or build arounds.

Death Sense (Survivalism)

Another Tier 1 philosophy that just goes the distance, Death Sense in combination with a good settlement survival limit can really bring those shield wielding Ambitionists to the front as now they have multiple dodges in their back pocket to cover for situations where their primary defenses (evasion, block, deflect) have failed. More dodge good when boss have more speed.

Herb Grinder (Screaming Antelope)

I straight up adore the Acanthus Healing Support archetype, it was at its best when the 1.5 Screaming Bracers generated Acanthus for us to pick up in every fight, something that weirdly seems to still work when I play with friends. Funny that the update only applies when I'm playing solo. Anyway, Herb Grinder takes the Acanthus heal and brings it to a perfected form, where each Acanthus represents a full heal for either the Grinder themselves or the other survivor they are grinding up and down on. For me this became the concept that the Herb Grinder was the Stand for the Tank (see JoJo's Bizarre Adventure if you want to know what a Stand is). Standing behind them (hence the name Stand) and fixing all their damage while the monster can only stand there and exclaim “Nani?”

Turns out if you have a couple of full heals (or more if you've got a way of bringing extra out to the showdown such as the Flower Knight Satchels) and bandages, most monsters start to really struggle to wear down your bruiser/tank.

Yes Cap, yes you can thanks to your own personal Stand called “Grind” (Named after the Alice in Chains song as per the standard Stand naming rules).

Utility Knowledges

Positivity (Optimism)

Reroll tokens are strong, having 2 of them in a showdown and a 20% chance to get a “refund” when using the reroll is great. It's not as good as having high stats, but rerolls get better and better the higher your stats are because they have the most impact. Failing a key roll that is an 8+ means you'll only succeed on the reroll 30% of the time, failing a key roll that is a 2+ means success 90% of the time.

Relativity (King)

Ambitionism survivors are here for a good time, not a long time and Relativity provides a way to accelerate the knowledges that they (and other survivors with them) have gained, progressing them quickly to their most powerful form. Relativity of course falls off once most knowledges have reached full maturity, but for early Ambitionism survivors this can be a way for Ambitionists to really help the settlement before they depart for their own grand adventures. Just be careful around dangerous observations!

Freedom (Romanticism)

Freedom's ability to spend lumi and generate additional survival actions is flexible and powerful. I won't spend too many words on this. Survival actions are amazing, more of them per turn can end showdowns faster or keep survivors alive longer.

I could keep going, but this isn't about ranking and rating the best knowledges in the game, it is supposed to be about Ambitionism, so let us now move on and take a look at those. However, please do suggest more knowledges and what they would be used for if any come to mind, this is such an engaging Philosophy because of how it functions as a foundational lynchpin for various other knowledge builds. Note I'm dropping my usual categorisation bullet points because these cards are all very direct in what they do and they don't evolve.

Font of Ingenuity

I wrote above how good Reroll Tokens can be, this is many reroll tokens. The real trick here is combining it with Collective Toil and various population gaining methods. Ambitionism also can provide a fairly large chunk of population itself each time you complete the rank ups. There really isn't too much more to write about Ambitionism if I'm honest. It's straightforward and strong, allowing you to smooth out your hunt and showdown phases a lot for the Ambitionist.

Death Education

What a BEAST of a card this is, but before we get into the nitty gritty details, it's interesting that this works for Mindlock. That is something which currently is only printed on the Crimson Helm, which means if we want to use all parts of the Death Education buffalo then we'll want the Crimson Crunk as our first Node 1 choice. I hope that this means Mindlock will be appearing again in the future because it's a very interesting ability, but also I don't want this card to be referring to just one other specific Quarry Monster related mechanic.

When we consider how much of a bonus this is going to be, +2 is probably the maximum our current settlements will usually achieve. We're certainly not expected to go much higher as 46 is the highest CC unlock and reaching 60 would require some atypical for settlement progression/timeline. Perhaps the Ivory Dragon will get us there, I can see CC 66 being a sweet little addition to that expansion.

Aspirational Ethos

Strength is a statistic that very much determines scaling for your survivors due to climbing toughness amounts for the monster. While one can sandbag with quarries if desperate, that's not an option with the various nemesis monsters, especially the Core and Finale ones. Aspirational Ethos represents +3 or +4 strength in most late game campaigns, that's a real good bump when combined with natural survivor strength, weapons and any other items used to push up strength. It's not the most exciting thing we could see drop out of the knowledge deck, but if we're honest about it, most of the top tier knowledges tend to be giving us pretty standard things. More slots, more ability to secure damage, more ability to soak damage. Aspirational Ethos is in that middle category and it does a good job and it can even help spice things up by supporting a weapon you love that has fallen behind the curve because of its low strength.

Final Thoughts

While Ambitionism survivors are a temporary element of the settlement and trends towards having them in lower numbers there is no denying that they bring a level of power and flexibility that cannot be denied. I'm not at this point set on whether I think Ambitionism or Champion is my preferred Tier 3 Philosophy, I'll leave that until we finish the Champion portion of this series, but I do think I've gained a far greater appreciation for everything this Philosophy is saying and offering. I've always liked the concept of the survivors who leave a settlement after a time, but the original versions (Twilight Sword, Katana) tend to leave a hole in the settlement's development which is hard to plug. Ambitionism survivors are common enough and have a speed of development that fits the part of the game they arrive in. It's always a pleasure to see how Team Death have grown as designers over the time since the first Kickstarter released and Ambitionism is another great example of that.