Arc Philosophy & Knowledge: Part 35 – Gatherism Knowledges

We've been through the first half of the puzzle in Part 34 and now it is time to complete that view with the individual Knowledges, the Virid Grove Special Hunt Event and the new resources that come from it.

Invasive – Core Tenet

In some ways Invasive reminds me of Faceism's Physiognomy though it does a replacement trick for the first two showdowns it is used in before evolving into providing an extra piece of terrain at Level II. This makes it slow to develop at first, but once we've done the replacement for the second showdown we can put down a Bloody Beard Plant and spam activating it to get to Level 3 where its range of options expand to grabbing any plant related terrain card. That means if you want it, we can keep pulling the Lonely Tree into play for more Lonely Tree Showdowns every year, mass deforestation for everyone!

Here's a non-exhaustive list of options for terrain we can pull with the L3 version of this:

• Acanthus Plants

• Flower Patches (Flower Knight)

• Gatherism Terrain

• The Lonely Tree (Lonely Tree Expansion)

• Mammoth Leaf (Frogdog)

• Nightmare Tree

• Tall Grass

All of these are pretty good and have their own defensive or offensive applications, the Nightmare Tree is the one that's proven to be the least useful, though it does offer up to two broken lanterns and a Lonely Ant if you make the right rolls. The clear “power gamer” choice is to grab “The Lonely Tree” every showdown as that offers an additional special showdown at the cost of a survivor's life which is a pretty good deal if you have spare population you're not doing anything else with. Without access to that expansion Tall Grass is always very good due to it providing two tiles and they both having a good amount of evasion and Acanthus Plants are very good for all the reasons we've always loved having access to Acanthus.

That extra activation only on terrain is something I've found to have some excellent tactical applications, while we can't pull them into play directly Invasive survivors can vault Toppled Pillars with ease, allowing them to pop in and out of cover and spend less time vulnerable to being targeted.

All in all Invasive is relatively quick to max out and has some unique, powerful options once you've got there. In fact I'd go as far as to say this is so good you don't mind having more than one copy of it on survivors.

Phytologist

If you were wondering how one gets up to the really high numbers on the Gatherism terrain, Phytologist is how that happens. A Phytologist is a biologist who specialises in plants and we can see that here with how we get a bonus to our plant related hunt events, Herb Gathering and Virid Grove. The power of this improves as it levels up and it's fast to level up to Phytologist II as we just need to have two plant related hunt event things like Herb Gathering. That means it should be levelled up in 2 hunts at maximum because if you've not already crafted a bone sickle you're being twp (a numpty, a fool, an idiot).

It's a little harder to get the second level pushed up, we need to be making rolls during plant related hunt events, so all we can do is try and increase the frequency we do that with Herb Gathering and the Virid Grove when we have access to that. We've got to roll a base total of 8 or higher per roll to hit that 10+ and we don't have easy access to many ways of increasing the roll cause Otherworldly Luck from the Flower Knight is a Fighting Art not a Knowledge. Still it should get there eventually, it's simple just roll high!

When we have this one fully loaded out it starts to do the heavy lifting in a bunch of different directions, we can use this in combination with Invasive to draw out attribute boosting plants (Movement for general use, Evasion for tanks) and build up our primary survivors in a range of powerful directions. We also get big boosts to help us get the top results for Herb Gathering and the Virid Grove (Grove is further down in this article).

Florafantasia

Florafantasia is a really interesting use of the Dangerous Observation mechanic. We get here a bunch of additional dodges that can be spent as long as the monster is next to/on terrain. Some showdowns have the monster adjacent to terrain a huge amount, the Screaming God is one such example. However, once we finish that final dodge we're exchanging Florafantasia for Frenzy. That's something we can plan around, with the goal being an initial soak of attacks via dodging and surge for block/deflect and then when we've burnt out most of our survival supply we can trigger the Frenzy for the token bonuses.

Overall though this has never quite managed to impress me beyond working as a temporary tool that I got without paying Lumi for it, when it turns up in the Forum I can always find better places to spend my resources – 3 Lumi is a lot for something that you could burn through in a single showdown and while that does represent some value for the investment it's just not enough for my preferences.

Hemerochory

Young Rachel: Mom, can we have a Satchel?

Rachel's Mom: We already have Satchel at home.

I'm not really sure what else to say in respect to Hemeorchory, it's an alternative to the Flower Knight's Satchel, which I'll put here for reference:

It can naturally be used in combination with the Satchel to double the number of perishables we're taking out on the hunt, so a lot depends on what you have access to. The Virid Grove provides a bunch of options, so does the Flower Knight flower deck (which we can pull into play via Invasive) and we always have good old Acanthus. So it's not bad, it's just kind of different.

The sowing of a resource for the extra survival isn't really much to crow about either. We're forced to do this before we see what the hunt event card is going to be and we can't do it during the showdown. One of the spots where it can be useful insurance is just before Overwhelming Darkness, which has 'spend survival or get horribly punished' results that one can roll. If you're at 0 survival while on a hunt and there are multiple cards left it is almost certainly worth popping a resource for this bonus, but that's sort of it. It's an insurance that you'd rather not cash in because spending resources during the showdown tends to be better value.

Botanical Tracker

Finally we have the big piece of the picture, Botanical Tracker, which is unlocked in Rank 4 and brings together a lot of the elements of Gatherism and makes them cohesive.

The Virid Grove event works much like its other three kin (Mineral Gathering, Herb Gathering, Sky Fishing) but only survivors with Botanical Tracker can enter the grove. In addition these survivors gain a +1 to their roll if they have a sickle in their gear grid, so you want to try and do that.

I don't have an image of the table, so I'm just going to summarise each roll with the key elements. The Virid Grove appears to be the realm of an Entity called The Absolute and that Entity appears in the Dragon King specific expansion as “A scaled oaken face stares down at you. Vicious looking flowers bloom in place of its eyes, and its gums are comprised of bloated birds vomiting long sharp teeth.”

The table runs from 1 to 14+, but there are no results here that are strictly just punishment for survivors so we don't have to worry too much about having a big bonus, though the reward for doing so is pretty high.

• 1 to 4 gives us Indecision and 1 random Virid Strange Resource.

• 5 to 8 gives us +3 insanity and 2 random Virid Strange Resources.

• 9 to 10 gives us +1 permanent evasion at the cost of -1 permanent movement. This is an OK trade if we're going down to movement 4, but below that can be quite painful on the showdown board. Less so if we are running a ranged focus for our Botanical Tracker.

• 11 to 13 gives us 3 random Virid Resources.

• 14+ Has us have our eardrums blown out by a gnarled knot that forms the shape of lips. We suffer Deaf in exchange for the Rooted to All ability. This ability is part of the PotStars constellations and it comes from The Absolute constellation which is why I believe that Gatherism and the Virid Grove link directly to The Absolute suggesting that its domain is related to plants.

Rooted to All: If you are standing at the start of your act, reveal the top 2 cards of the AI deck and put them back in any order.

This is of course a very strong ability as it's a slotless, automatic version of the Rawhide Headband and it's a reasonable trade in exchange for the survivor's hearing, especially in PotDream campaigns because those survivors have Fist Pump as an additional alternative to Encourage.

The main thing we are here for though are those Virid Resources, there are six different types and most of them are singletons, only the Vim Basil has two duplicates, meaning that a 3 in 8 Virid Resources will be Basil. These resources are mostly focused around providing temporary buffs that you are encouraged to employ because there are no crafting recipes that all of these (apart from the Jabillo) can be used in. I like this addition to the game as small, temporary consumables are a space that is mostly empty due to how the game's core mechanics don't really have space for them. It's always needed to be baked into some extra element be that Vermin, Acanthus, Flower Resources or these Virid ones. I think these Virids are probably the best iteration since Acanthus because they turn up in a relatively consistent manner and they are gained before the showdown meaning they don't cost action economy to collect in the way that a bug patch does. Also they don't have “roll a dice and die” text printed on any of them, which is a huge boost when compared to the vermin roster.

I've been writing it for a while now with my spell checker aggressively underlining virid every time I write it and maybe now I should at least go into what the word means. It's essentially a bright green, but more often it is used in relation to landscape covered in vegetation. This is a very evocative descriptor to use for resources and it's really selling that these plants are different from the ones we normally encounter.

Before we take a look at them there is one more thing to cover, these are all Perishable, which is a resource ability we first encountered in the Flower Knight expansion. This means that the resource will archive itself at the end of the settlement phase unless you specifically have something that prevents that perishable archive. Because of that we're encouraged to use these resources in the showdown before we return or in the case of the Jabillo craft with it before the end of the settlement phase.

Vim Basil

This is our most common draw as it is three copies in the eight card “deck”. It's also got one of the least impressive bonuses as it can be consumed and archived to gain +3 survival. That is still not something to turn our noses up at, survival is a great resource and having some “pocket survival” to chow down on can translate to a monster dying faster or attacks being avoided. It's not flashy, but survival actions win showdowns.

I've covered this Basil first because it's the baseline we're comparing everything else to.

Denture Jabillo

Out of all of the resources this is the one with the most friction in respect to using it or not because not only does the Jabillo have the Perfect Bone keywords, making it something that we really want to craft with, but it also can be thrown at the monster to deal an automatic wound if you are within three spaces. On top of that, the odds of getting it home intact are lowered by the fact that any damage suffered (any!) results in it being archived and causing a random severe injury to the survivor carrying it.

I absolutely love what this card represents, we're being tempted with a big juicy prize here, if we can get our survivor to the end of the showdown without them being damaged we've got a sweet crafting material. However if the survivor so much as stubs their toe they could immediately die in a fruity, virid, explosion of teeth and bits. That's such a good risk/reward ratio and I love it because if you get blown up by this it's mostly going to be your fault.

As an additional note, it is worth triggering Virid Grove as late as possible in the Hunt Phase so you don't get detonated by some random hunt event after you've scooped up this prize.

Dreaming Baneberry

The baneberry has a very powerful effect that's linked to the Ethereal Dreamer's realm in that it provides a staggering +4 temporary boost to luck in for the next attack in exchange for +1 hunt XP. Gaining Hunt XP has become a positive in the world of Arc Survivors so this is something I'm very happy to burn before an attack with a reliable weapon. We want as much accuracy and speed as possible (reasonable) for this attack because we do not want the result of using this and then whiffing our next attack. My preference is to pass this at the start of the showdown to a survivor with spear specialisation/blue charm and let them go ham because that's the weapon type which is most resistant to the trap even if I miss out on stacking Deadly on top of the 4 luck.

It's an exciting resource to use, but it can really feel terrible if you miss. Fortunately if you're playing Dream Keeper then Guardian has your back!

Lifting Milkweed

This is a really fun little design that feels a bit less 'all in' when compared to the Baneberry. It offers us a completely safe round up in the air at the cost of the attack and then follows that up with a “plunging attack” from above on our next act. We get to land wherever we like and make a melee attack with +4 strength. This is honestly just a fun one, the cost of entire activation is high, but the flexibility on the follow up act is worth it at times. Nonsense time wasters like The Phoenix (Rematerialise) monsters with dangerous phases (Dragon King, Sunstalker), dangerous Durations and treacherous board positions like the wrong end of the Screaming God showdown board can all be overcome here.

I'll also point out the Knocked Down (Survivor) rules text here.

Knocked Down (Survivor) When a survivor is knocked down, turn the miniature on its side. Knocked down survivors always stand at the end of the next monster turn. If a survivor is knocked down in the middle of their attack, the remainder of that attack is canceled. Knocked down survivors may only spend survival to dodge (remaining knocked down), and cannot spend activation or movement.

Notice that we do still get an act if we're a knocked down survivor, it's just that normally we don't have much to do in it. But now we can float upwards on our angry little Milkweed balloon instead of needing to be encouraged. That's a nice little edge case bonus for a deaf survivor (or similar) to take advantage of.

We all float down here.

Stonenail Jericho

The most defensively orientated of these virids, this is a slam dunk thematic design as it is a reference to the Rose of Jericho but using blood instead of water. 3 Deflect tokens is a lot of deflect tokens to gain, and gaining 1 bleeding token isn't strictly a negative these days. This is one I like to hand off to the front line survivor because I know that its loose timing rules and extreme defense are very powerful tools to have when things look desperate.

There's not really too much more to write except 3 Deflect tokens is a lot of deflect tokens!

Wailing Rattlegrass

Our last virid resource is a very straightforward one, it allows you to archive it in order to turn any monster reaction into “All non-deaf survivors suffer [Monster level] Brain Damage” instead. A lot depends on the reaction you're countering here, one would assume it's going to be worse than the brain damage from the rattlegrass.

The Art

I'm going to take a moment here to just gush about the artwork on these resources, the Jabillo is so delightfully meaty and toothy version of its real world equivalent (Hura crepitans) which also explodes when it is ripe. The Dreaming Baneberry's collection of eye buds is some classic weird horror and the Lifting Milkweed's angry face makes me think of Pokemon designs. The Stonenail Jericho is named for the Rose of Jericho – a type of spikey moss that can survive without water for extended periods, coming back to life as if resurrected (hence the biblical name) and even though the Vim Basil and Wailing Rattlegrass look a bit more mundane they are also vibrant and beautiful. The artist responsible for all these pieces managed to make them look like they've been printed in the pages of a botany book and all that's missing is line sketches of cross sections. I love these cards so very much.

Comparison to Flower Resources

Before wrapping up I wanted to briefly take a look at how these new Virid Strange Resources compare to the old Flower Knight resources as both types are Perishable and in campaigns with the Flower Knight as a quarry, survivors with Invasive III can pull these into play from the Terrain deck by grabbing the Flower Patches terrain card. That gives us [Monster Level] Flower Patches for the showdown to interact with.

Not only does this terrain provide us access to the Flower resources, it also provides the gathering survivor a +1 Luck token, which can be a huge boost for survivors and especially at higher monster levels.

The flower resources themselves are also very solid, while you won't have access to the Sense Memory outside of the lantern year following a successful Flower Knight hunt these resources are all still very viable for crafting due to them all having basic keywords.

• Lantern Bloom and Warbling Bloom = Hide

• Sighing Bloom = Organ

• Osseous Bloom = Bone

• Lantern Bud = Scrap

All of these have abilities that they can be consumed for during the showdown or settlement phase giving a bonus effect along with the Flower Addiction disorder. With the notable ones being the Osseous Bloom that removes all bleeding and negative attribute tokens, the Lantern bloom that is used during the settlement phase to give +3 endeavours and force the survivor who uses it to skip the next hunt. A big one is of course the Warbling Bloom which can be archived during the settlement phase to grow a troll-faced plant person with Flower Addiction and thereby increase your settlement population.

All of this makes the Flower Knight a very desirable supporting quarry monster for Gatherism settlements and in addition makes Gatherism a fun element for an Arc Survivor People of the Bloom campaign. One can assume that the Abyssal Woods will provide even more weird and wonderful plants to experiment with, but that's a future space we'll have to explore later as any new content that includes terrain with plant related words like Flower, Grass, Tree and similar become another point that Gatherism can interact with. This kind of “future proofing” design is something I very much enjoy because it stops a philosophy from becoming parasitic due to not having any external mechanisms to interact with.

Final Thoughts

While I have already reviewed this and recommended the Gatherism boxed set for anyone who likes the theming and has already picked up the Gambler's Chest it's worth noting that this is an additional Tier 2 Philosophy. Tier 2 is the most crammed and competitive spot in the three tiers we have. Only Optimism (for me) is a bit lacklustre, all of the rest are just incredible in how different they are from each other and how they change your gameplay. That means Gatherism has stiff competition and while I do absolutely think this is an incredible philosophy, it's sat alongside four other incredible philosophies (Collectivism, Regalism, Verminism, Gourmandism) and that's a tough spot to be in. The unique nature of Gatherism, manipulating terrain and providing “consumables” along with its ability to play in interesting manners with other Philosophies does make a strong argument for its existence, this situation overall also makes a very strong argument for reducing the number of Tier 2 Philosophy releases in the future, at least until Tier 1 is ahead and Tier 3 catches up a bit.

I enjoy the support focus of this philosophy a great deal and it is pushing into an area that is ripe for expansion along with placing some interesting demands on players such as the Jabillo's brilliant tension, if you take a Denture Jabillo home successfully you should give yourself an achievement badge. Gatherism is fun to play with, adds to the world's texture in a great manner and is always a blast. I think if one handed/thrown weapons get more rounding out then Gatherism will come together really well and even if it doesn't Gatherism survivors still make for good support for archers in this game as they can bring the terrain for the bow using survivors to stand on, helping make bows even more obscene and powerful.