This guide will explain the proper changes the trinkets make since the tooltip do not explain much or almost nothing.
Contraband Trinkets Explanatory Guide
Living Ammo
It takes effect after getting a kill with the Musketeer, until then you will only have the negative of the trinket. Living Ammo changes how the first 4 skills of the Musketeer work in a similar way of how each different type of ammo does. In this case the changes are (tested skills on Lv1):
- Standard Shot: -20% dmg, Heal 8 self on hit.
- Smokescreen: debuff (100% debuff chance) +30% blight amount received.
- Buckshot: debuff -100% healing, -100% blight cure chance (110% chance for both).
- Bombard: blight 2/3t (100%).
We can assume that the numeric values changes depending on the difficulty and possibly level like how other trinkets already work. Overall, it seems a good trinket that gets more value with a Blight based team.
Do not forget that while you have equipped the Living Ammo bullet itself, that the negative goes from -20% to -5% thus almost negating the bad part of it.
Pure Amber Core
This trinket basically changes the entire character to a new one and it’s up to you if you like it or not after getting one kill with Dredge.
It changes the mech skills with a different name but I won’t bother mention it, just the changes from what we have to the new one (tested on Lv1):
- Pillar of Steel changes to: XXOO – OOXX, -35%dmg Armor piercing, +50% dmg Vs Amberblighted, +40% Heat.
- Wyrd Conflagration changes to: XXOO – OOOO (no longer AoE) -70%dmg, ignores prep ACC, Amberblights, +15% Heat.
- Prismatic Doom changes to: XXOO – OOXX, +25%dmg, Cooldown of 2trs, +40% Heat, Debuff Self: -15%dmg, +15%dmg taken.
As you can see, the punch can no longer be done on rank 3 neither Prismatic Doom can reach rank 3 nor gets the bonus Vs Mark. Wyrd is no longer AoE but reaches any position. Meanwhile some numbers can appear strong, I personally think this trinket is a waste of resources since it makes you unable to deal damage while on foot and in the mech if you don’t get a kill in what’s basically two hits you are forced out of the mech unless you want to die that is.
Remnant of the Empire
After getting hit, the trinket takes effect and changes the two support skills of the Crusader.
Base skills (Lv1):
- Battle Heal: Heal 6, +25% better healing the more stressed the target.
- Inspiring Cry: Heal 2, Heal 5 stress, +5 Torch.
With the item it changes to:
- Battle Heal: Heal 8, cures blight/bleed, self: bleed/blight 2/3t (120% chance).
- Inspiring Cry: Heal 2, clear horror, -5 Torch, buff target: -30% stress received. debuff self: horror 2/3t.
Like with Living Ammo, the numeric values changes depending on the level of the skill and we can assume with the difficulty area.
Personally, I don’t think it’s enough to make the Crusader as the only healer of the group – more so since early game you’ll deal more damage to yourself than healing. It’s a good idea for an item but the negatives seem to be way too severe.
Perfumer’s Needle
This trinket is self explanatory however it doesn’t tell you that it has special interactions with some characters.
If you give this trinket to Flagellant, the riposted target will do a bleed check the same that for the Shieldbreaker it does a blight check.
If you know another interaction similar to this one, let me know in the comments so I can edit this.
Pilebunker
Even if it might seem self explanatory, I have seen some people confuse the “Receive 20%” bit. Just to make it clear, what this does is transform 20% of the damage your character does to the character itself – yes you’re killing yourself, if you crit a unit that had 1hp left to die you will suffer the entirety of it (20%) not that 1hp. Because of how the overkill works, I don’t think that the trinket is worth it.
I tried Coxswain’s Cutlass and I’m a little disappointed. I tried with musketeer/Jester/HM/flagellant I had enough healing with musketeer+flag, so it really was a bleed fest. Bug the lack of ACC bonus on Coxswain’s Cutlass makes it random to hit during prep round, and even so, with 100% bleed chance you may fail to bleed the opponent. The houndmaster has other great bleed skills, but none of them are good during prep. Which means that +18% CRT you’re talking about usually takes four freaking round before being a reality. Maybe it’s best in longer fights, because in my veteran run, I had little opportunities to get those crits. And I just didn’t know what to do with my houndmaster during the prep round.
Next time I’ll try with that “+15 ACC during prep” trinket. With a jester bonus it may be enough to have a reliable hit in first round.
You’re right about the first hit being unreliable as hell and yes, the CRT bonus shines the most in long fights against elites/champions or bosses but it’s still intended to go with +CRT trinkets for the party. The Coxswain’s Cutlass loses a lot on quick battles where you’re better off biting or you’re in a DPS race like the Ygnolian where you want to kill him before turn 6 or you’re basically dead.
With that team you mention, if you manage to obtain the last trophies of EI and give them to the Flagellant you’ll see that you crit constantly as the Flagellant, the same that Occultist already has really high crit on his dagger.
It’s a niche item but can be useful!
Nice little guide. I sort of got what most of this meant, but I also just thing the contraband trinkets are a bit too gimmicky to be fun. I honestly don’t use any of them in my playthroughs since they feel like a waste of a slot.
Do not sleep on the contrabands, they are really fun and can be rather strong.
Maybe I’ll give them another check, but I just never felt like they were for me. I guess I’m really just a “stack damage trinkets and hit big”.
But I’ll definitely keep an eye out. That does sound pretty good, but isn’t 100% blight chance really bad? Most enemies I can think of naturally just have high resistances. I always ignore characters like the Plague Doctor early on, since it feels like I can’t ever get DoTs off.
Very clever though!
The chance% of trinkets always increase by 20% per difficulty, so they’re on the average. The only place in Black Reliquary that you might struggle with DoTs is the Cavern, but outside of that you can DoT everything failry easily as long as you pay attention to each unit – like don’t bring bleeding based teams to the Exposed Interior if the quest is at night because Kvarotz cannot bleed.
Plague Doctor was, in base game, the strongest character in the game – you can tell that in Black Reliquary they nerfed her a huge deal but her strong DoTs are still untouched. She has the highest DoT damage, AoE on the backrow, an OP buff to your main damage dealer that now you can use on preparation turn, AoE stun… She’s great.
That’s fair then. I’ve gotten to the end of the content but I only really used the same few heroes, and I never really did any DoT parties. A combination of being able to miss the attack and the DoT just drove me nuts in many cases.
I’m going to certainly give your combo a try though, too bad my only Jester I ever rolled on this current save got absolutely merked by a giant worm.
Hello. This is really usefull, thank you.
Can you please explain what an ‘Extract’ is in the description of the Perfumer’s Needle? I still have no idea.
I don’t know exactly what it refers as “Extract” since when I have been using it, I didn’t see any item with such a name neither anything out of the ordinary. So I presume it’s just an extra random item that depends on the difficulty and probably region – or my many testings I have been extremely unlucky and I never triggered the 33% which I doubt since me and my gf have been running this item in almost every run as our first contraband item on both of our saves.
Plague Doctor have a bleed riposte too. nice guide, but a lot of contraband trinket are pushing for one way playstyle like full amberblight party or full riposte team. i agree that some of debuff are too severe and are too much RNG based. Keep it up ! great job !