A rather in depth guide on how to grift as the one and only, Colossal Walking Disaster: Smith! This guides almost everything there is about Smith and how to effectively play him (in battle mostly). The guide is completely spoiler free and does not cover the events of Smiths story. I won’t be covering too much about negotiations as it’s mostly the same as the other characters with a few slight differences, plus I dislike negotiations as it just doesn’t feel fun. The guide is intended to assist you on the battle aspect, hence the low amount of negotiation stuff I mention.
Contents
Introduction
All credit goes to Rosaria!
So, Smith, you’ve played enough to unlock him (hopefully) and are wondering how he works, maybe the tutorials don’t explain enough or maybe it’s a bit hard to get your head around, fear not! I took the time to write this guide for you!
Learning to play Smith is a bit more difficult than Rook for example. Instead of a pair of pistols with illegal ammunition and a spare coin. You’re fighting with a giant hammer, several hundred bottles and trauma at your disposal.
Smiths innate abilities to self heal and dish out a hell of a lot of damage make him a very difficult character to take down.
I’ll be covering most of the stuff about Smith here so get reading!
About Smith
Smith was pampered as a child and therefore has a low resolve when it comes to negotiations. However he has many strong connections and his negotiation decks revolve around convincing your opponent to bow down or self damaging your arguments to the point of exploding.
Smith himself is a massive alcoholic with 3 livers of cast iron and his combat deck revolves around utilising a stolen flask and his hammer to win battles. The flask itself acts the same as Sal’s “fight dirty” card and can provide strong items to assist you in victory.
Smith’s story revolves around hi- actually you can find out for yourself.
The Species that Smith is born of are named the ‘Kra’deshi’ which are Amphibian like bipedal creatures which have a boon to heal their wounds far quicker than their rivalling species in the Griftlands, Smith can take this and abuse it to the point of invulnerability. He is also far stronger than the other two playing characters (at this time) his healthpool stands at 60 and can be raised to over 120 if you play your cards correctly and attend the correct encounters.
Kra’deshi Negotiation!
Smith in negotiations already suffers from a weak 26 resolve. A lot of his hostile cards are either weak and ramp up quickly or they self damage arguments to either enhance them or deal major damage to enemy arguments.
Utilising cards such as ‘Bully’ will deal more damage with each consecutive hostile card played, this means you can combine hostile cards that cost 0 actions and raise the damage of your ‘Bully’ cards to make it easier in negotiations.
Smith has a second function in Negotiations: Renown. Renown functions similar to influence in that it boosts your diplomacy cards. The base renown argument has 3 Resolve and loses one stack per turn, basic renown cards give 2 renown and can be upgraded to give 3 per card played. At 2 renown your brag cards will deal additional damage. The renown argument deals 1 damage per 2 stacks and will damage your core argument by its amount of stacks when it is destroyed by anyone.
I’d honestly talk more about this but I seriously dislike negotiating and avoid it whenever possible. However if you are confident in your abilities as Sal you’ll do fine as Smith.
Combat as Smith
Smiths base deck is easily superior to Sal’s in certain Scenarios but falls down to Rook in shorter battles due to Rook’s ability to use overcharge as a lethal weapon. As basic cards are the most versatile it is recommended you upgrade them to suit your playstyle. An important note is to to always upgrade your flask to the Boosted prefix allowing you to unlock far stronger drinks and abilities compared to ‘improvise+’ which has 0 effect on any Smith cards as he does not utilise improvising abilities.
Smith is capable of utilising powerful cards such as the ‘Bio-strike’ to directly increase his moxie which I’ll cover later. To sum it up quickly, every time you take damage on your turn your Moxie will increase by 1-2 points, it will half itself at the end of your turn after it activates. Cards such as Meditation will increase your Moxie aswell.
Smiths basic defense cards grant 3 defense and can be upgraded to work with a drink filled deck or be used in conjunction with multiple 0 action cards to increase their power.
Smith also has ‘Chain’ cards within his deck which ramp up into stronger cards as long as you continue to use them as they appear in your hand, if you fail to do so it will restart and you’ll have to spend 2 actions to play the ‘Chain’ card again.
Hammer, Flask, Empty Bottle
Battling as Smith is similar to Sal and Rook, you’ve got your basic deck and basic “fight dirty” cards which give boosts in battle. Smiths flask gives out drinks to use and potential debuff inflicting methods while his hammer is entirely around ‘trauma’ with the bottle side being focused on adrenaline and such.
When you use the ‘flask’ card you’ll be given a choice of 3 drinks with the possibility of ‘Chug’ which allows you to reroll your selection and grants you an additional empty bottle card. Usage of cards such as the ‘Murder Bay Blaster’ grant permanent effects for that battle. It is a good idea to match the ‘Green juice’ card with two dropkicks for an instant heal + additional Moxie. However you shouldn’t rely on items that are completely random as it’ll inevitably get you killed. The flask creates ’empty bottle’ cards whenever you play it, these can be used to play certain cards that require them to be used in them.
Smiths hammer can be used to inflict ‘trauma’ on a target. Trauma works like this: You attack a target with a card that can cause trauma and then continue attacking said target until it reaches 10. Once it hits 10 it will remove all trauma and apply ‘traumatised’ which will double the damage of any attack dealt to someone with that effect.
Moxie & Alleviation
Smith has two vital functions in battles that assist him in winning: Moxie and Alleviation, first I’ll cover Moxie and it’s uses.
Moxie alone isn’t very powerful so you should never build a reliance on it unless you have a deck built specifically around it, which’ll have to be utilising cards such as ‘Bio-strike’ and grafts such as a ‘Chafe’ there are other grafts aswell which grant self damaging abilities when playing cards such as the ‘Empty bottle’ for example
Moxie works like this: You play the ‘dropkick’ card and take 3 damage, the 3 damage you took went into possible alleviation and your Moxie was raised by either 1 or 2. This can happen an infinite number of times and can save your life in many situations. As stated by the image, your Moxie will half itself until it reaches 1 every turn. You will always regenerate one HP per turn since Moxie will never go below one. You cannot gain Moxie or potential alleviation on an enemy turn.
Alleviation on the other hand works like this: You play a the ‘dropkick’ card and take 3 damage. Your Moxie will go up by 1 or 2 but you will gain 3 possible alleviation. You can use cards such as the bottomless vial to alleviate health. Every time you play said card you will gain back 2 of your lost health on that turn. The Chafe graft will always help with this and grants a bonus Moxie point at the start of your turn when upgraded.
Self damage is important depending on your deck but if you do too much or too little it won’t be as effective as it could be, you should learn to balance whether or not you should self damage at a point in battle. Self damage that doesn’t come from the Chafe is not piercing and will deal damage to your defence first which can result in a really bad outcome.
Exodus
That’s the end of the guide, I will most likely update it in the future when more content is added and possibly cover Smith grafts aswell. I’m always willing to help anyone in the comments if you’re having trouble with Smith. It’d mean a lot to me if you gave the guide a thumbs up and followed the creators.
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