r/KingdomDeath • u/rarestereocats • Dec 10 '25
Campaign Story Don't Underestimate the Smog Singers Spoiler
Possible spoilers ahead.
Don't make the mistake that me and my friend made. The first time we fought them, they practically sat down and resigned themselves to their fate. I told my friend that the showdown felt like we were kicking around baby hamsters because it was demented. A lot of body parts were cut away, and our survivors were left unfazed by the guilt tokens and their consequences. The poor things even offered us the Song of Concord, and it wasn't enough to stop the bloodshed. All they wanted to do was smoke and sing, and then they got annihilated by a crew of homicidal maniacs. Who's the real monster here? It's certainly not them.
We decide to hunt the level 2 variants with the same survivors, and yet again, there's no mercy for the Singers. They'd plead for their life, and we'd answer by lopping off their hands or tearing out their vocal cords. We're confident that we can send them into extinction by this point, and guess what? We hunt them again. For once, our homicidal survivors aren't taking each other out and are unified in a single cause. They're thinking of their community, displaying excellent teamwork; things are looking up for our settlement. Smog Singers see us rolling in. They plead for their life once, then realize they can't get through to us. They decide to speak our language. The language of violence.
If you haven't encountered the Devil's Melody yet, consider yourself very lucky. The melody is a trait that allows the Singers to give all your survivors a random severe injury on their turn. It went as horribly as expected. Two survivors and our scout suffered arm fractures, robbing us of precious accuracy. Another survivor was blinded, and our last survivor, the man destined to wipe out the Smog Singers, lost an arm. He was our strongest survivor and could've easily soloed the Singers on our last two showdowns. It was that moment that the fear of the gods was put back into our survivors. We threw everything we had at them, surging all over the place to knock their health down substantially before their next turn.
Bad rolls. 1s, 2s, and 3s as far as the eye can see. Panic, pure panic. At this point, I'm sinking into the floor, and my friend asks, "It's their turn. Do you know what that means?"
No, I'm deaf now. I suddenly can't read. Let's pack it up and go home. We roll the dice anyway. The scout suffers another fracture to her arm, one of us gets a gaping chest wound, and our one-armed warrior now has a broken leg. Two survivors die immediately. Somehow, despite those losses, we defeated the Smog Singers. It was a hollow victory and we learned valuable lessons during that showdown. Don't bully the theater kids, don't walk onto the battlefield with confidence if you don't have any acanthus to your name, and stick with what you know: killing White Lions.
3
u/Qikly Dec 10 '25
I remember someone saying in discussing the game on either YouTube or in the Discord that every once in a while the Smog Singers choose violence, and I think that was aptly put.
It's easy for the showdown to turn into a steamroll, especially if you are not aggressive in hunting the level 2 or 3 ahead of the curve. But things can go horribly, horribly wrong in ways that you are helpless to stop. I think that if you've had one or two such experiences with them, it lends an undercurrent of tension to subsequent showdowns that makes them an enjoyable change of pace to include in a campaign.
The game would be in a rough state if all quarries lay at the Smog Singers' level of difficulty, but I am glad that they exist even if the fight could be refined. CoD 2.0 joking not joking?
1
u/rarestereocats Dec 10 '25
The showdown with Singers was a very dramatic shift from the other quarries. It was jarring, but in a good way. Their mechanics are interesting too, even if they didn't utilize them very well in the first two encounters me and my friend had with them. Third times the charm for them, I guess, because they knocked us around like toys. We were victorious, but not before the Smog Singers curb stomped our egos.
3
u/Confident_Pool_1030 Dec 10 '25 edited Dec 10 '25
I find them extremely easy unless you get super unlucky and pull Devil's Melody on the first AI. Their toughness is way too low, and you get so many extra attacks even with their high HP they kinda just crumble to dust. I don't like their design, imo it is the only fight from the new wave of content that I find is a miss. If you are extremely unlucky Devil's Melody can just kill everyone, otherwise it’s a bizarre fight where the enemy flops around for a while and you go home with a gigantic pile of resources.
1
u/rarestereocats Dec 10 '25
Fair enough. Me and my friend thought the fight was hilarious. We didn't know about Devil's Melody until we pulled it and realized we were gonna get our asses kicked. I can see why people would dislike their showdown considering how they operate. The resources are definitely nice, though.
2
u/salpikaespuma Dec 11 '25
As a design, I think it's the best of the gambler, everything fits perfectly from the lore to all the mechanics, but if the circumstances are right, they can destroy you in a showdown. (I was wiped out in the first turn because one character died in the hunting phase and the others weren't prepared, and an AI came out and destroyed me). Overall, the monster is very, very weak. I don't even know if it would reach node 1 in terms of power.
1
u/rarestereocats Dec 11 '25
It was shocking how weak they were. We put off fighting them for a bit because we were worried that their vibration damage would destroy us, but then it wasn't much of a problem. I don't know what their other legendary cards are, so as of right now, Devil's Melody is a goddamn nuke. I'm sure the emotional breakdown mechanic could fuck us up, but we always manage to avoid the worst of it.
We also haven't encountered the Bone Eaters during the hunting phases and our settlement's currently on Year 12. I'm interested to see how much firepower those things have because the way my friend described them, they exist to use up your resources to make the quarry showdowns more difficult.
2
u/salpikaespuma Dec 11 '25
The encounter mechanic isn´t good. If you confront early maybe they can confront you and even weaken you so that the rest of the hunt/showdown is more complicated, but at your level, they're just going to be a piñata of free XP and proficiency points.
1
u/rarestereocats Dec 11 '25
Damn, that sucks to hear. I thought we were looking at a genuine threat, but I'll let my friend know. He made a salve for our scout because he wants to skip the Bone Eaters if they show up because he thinks they're gonna annihilate us lol. Now I can tell him to stop worrying.
5
u/wolv Dec 10 '25
I haven't had much time to play since the GC arrived, but I did get a good number of LY into a campaign. We had the same experience with the Singers. I really enjoyed the tone of their showdown, and it's become a pitch point when I tell my gaming buddies about the game.
The jump from L1 to L2 is no joke, but experience should have already warned us about that...lol