Rat King

The tragic Rat King. When their tangled bodies become corpses you will gain four bones.

Leshy

The Rat King is a Beast card in Act I of Inscryption.

Strategy[]

The Rat King has relatively low stats for a card that costs 2 Blood. However, when it perishes, it gives the player 4 Bones due to its Bone King Sigil. This can drastically help develop the fight and can allow strong Bone cards such as the Alpha or the Rattler to be played very easily. In most cases, it is generally better to sacrifice the card's Sigil onto something cheaper and with more usability, such as Warren. If intending to keep Rat King around though, bear in mind that its purpose is to perish and give you its Bones; not to stay alive.

Good Upgrades[]

Power buffs from a Campfire allow it to do more damage before inevitably perishing.
Airborne allows Rat King to attack directly for damage in most cases.
Hoarder can allow to find a card to speed up the process of acquiring its Bones and then playing a card.
Defensive Sigils such as Mighty Leap and Guardian allow the card to perish more easily and rewards its Bones.
Sigils like Fecundity and Unkillable return the card, allowing to perish multiple times over and reward even more Bones.
Dam Builder allows for 12 bones.
Loose tail allows for 8 bones (despite the fact their tails are tied together).
Unkillable allows you to play the card multiple times and generate a large amount of bones.

Situational Upgrades[]

Worthy Sacrifice can be used to replace Rat King with a stronger card once it is played, as well as immediately yielding four bones. However, it should be kept in mind that if you would do this by sacrificing a Black Goat onto the Rat King, it may be better to sacrifice the Rat King onto the Black Goat instead as its lower blood cost allows it to better serve the aforementioned purpose.
Health buffs from a Campfire make the card harder to defeat. This is generally useful for the same reasons it is useful on most cards, however it may lower the effectiveness of the sigil if you do not have something in your hand to sacrifice the Rat King for.

Bad Upgrades[]

Bone support Sigils like Scavenger and Bone Digger are not ideal, since the card likely won't last long to benefit from them.
Sigils that protect the card, such as Armored and Waterborne, are counterproductive to its intended purpose.
- The card can still be sacrificed for its Bones, however, if that is your aim.
Many Lives means that the card cannot be sacrificed for its Bones.

Synergies[]

Rat King can be used as an intermediary sacrifice when summoning Lammergeier to make it even more powerful. The extra Bones generated by Rat King adds 2 Power by default to Lammergeier, plus the additional Bones from the other two sacrifices means Lammergeier will deal 3 damage directly at a minimum.
Rat King's defeat can be offset by a Coyote which costs the same as what Rat King gives.
With Rat King intended to perish, Corpse Maggots is a great beneficiary to its death.

Trivia[]

A Rat King is an animal phenomenon in which a group of rats have their tails helplessly knotted together by intertwining with hair or being glued by a sticky substance, usually resulting in their deaths.
In early builds of Kaycee's Mod, the Rat King used to be a part of the Bone Starter Deck alongside Alpha and Warren. This was changed before the final release.