Equipping, upgrading, and augmenting items is key to enhancing your explorer's abilities. However, the mechanics can be tricky to navigate. This guide clarifies how everything work together, providing practical examples and strategies to help you optimize your inventory and gameplay.

Golden Rule Reminder

"An explorer gains all the abilities from their consumable and equipped items."

Manual, page 19.

Explorer gains access to all abilities from both equipped and consumable items.
Think of it this way: when you equip an item, you’re adding its abilities to your available actions (or triggers in the case of passive abilities).

Let’s consider Cicatrizer as the main item and Blood-Boost gun as an upgrade, augmented by Adjustable scope. In this case, you choose whether to attack with Blood-Boost or with Cicatrizer.

This game is all about existential dread and complexity, so naturally, we need to dive deeper. The key to avoiding confusion lies in the golden rule above, and paying close attention to the text on the cards.

Notice how the Adjustable Scope reads:

"Increase this weapon’s attack rolls..."

This means that if you attack with Cicatrizer, you won’t benefit from the Adjustable scope’s bonus. Passive abilities of augments are written precisely to clarify that they only affect the item they are attached to.

Now, let’s take a look at passive abilities, as both weapons in our example have triggers like:

"When you hit..."
and
"When you kill..."

— these are not restricted to triggering only with their specific weapon. For instance, Cicatrizer’s passive ability will activate even if you kill a monster using the Blood-Boost gun!
An explorer who grasps the power of these conditional effects will find great strategic potential.

If we, however, swap out Cicatrizer for Reconnoisseur, we see the difference:


"When you kill with this weapon..."

This is more limiting, as it requires kills specifically from that weapon.

Tips and Tactics

Cicatrizer’s passive ability will trigger after every killed unit, if you were the one to activate the traps or hit the barrels.

You can intentionally target yourself (or an ally) with the Blood-Boost gun before attacking a barrel or activating a trap. Since damage from barrels and traps is considered yours when you trigger them, this can set up combos.

Use your essence to increase attack rolls for traps or barrels that you activate.

If you’re standing adjacent to another explorer, or near the trap lever or barrel they’re triggering, you can use your essence to increase the attack rolls of the activated traps or barrels.

FAQ

Consider the nested conditional "If you kill" within the active ability of Savage blade.


That second attack effect is tied specifically to that weapon's first attack. This type of nested conditionals don’t apply to other items, or even other abilities on the same item.