October 27, 2009

IoTM Review: Gib, Gib, Gib…

Do I even do these reviews anymore? Fuck if I know.

This month’s KoL IoTM offering is the Squamous Gibberer. It’s a clear Cthulhu reference, so that’s neato as well as torpedo. It potatoes. It whelps. It Wild Hares for extra turns. It breathes underwater.

Basically, it’s completely a win. I love Potatoes and Whelps, and the Wild Hare is one of two familiars whose functionality I liked and I wished I had. (The other being the Doppelshifter.) Now that I have this and the Tiny Costume Wardrobe, I’ve got every really rare thing I would pretend I would actually need. (Not that I’m going to turn down something else, if you offer it to me! I’ll take it!)

This is never really going to be bleeding edge, though, because potato and whelp action is just never going to be optimal. If you’re a good, optimal player, you shouldn’t need the healing or the attack blocking. You should be prepared for them anyway. The additional turns are likely not going to be worth it, either, especially when you’re needing to run turns with, say, your Baby Sandworm to get spleen turn items. Not to mention, apparently, before a buff, it was actually pretty close in power to the Cuddlefish. I still say it’s worth it for me, as the flavor is just fun as hell and I want that Wild Hare functionality, but maybe for the cheaper among us, just using the Cuddlefish would probably suffice.

But fuck, I’m happy with it. It’s a tiny Cthulhu that whispers in your ear, does the two familiar functions I love, plus gives me more turns. That’s a good Mr. Familiar to me. That’s the kind of familiar that’s going to make me want to make one more run in order to test it out, and that’s the exact reason I donate for these things.
So there.

October 4, 2009

Too Late IoTM Review: Eyeballs.

So I’ve actually been playing Kingdom of Loathing again, although in Hardcore Oxy, so I only play like once a week or so. Still, that’s been working out well enough. And, of course, since I’m ascending again, I’ve been doing 100% familiar runs. And since the most recent Mr. Familiar I’ve gotten was the He-Boulder, I’ve been using that.
I like it pretty well.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that it’s a part Ghuol Whelp. It’s always nice to have that extra healing after most combats. I heart those kinds of familiars. (Seriously, if only the Cotton Candy Carnie had flavor that I liked better. Then I’d use it all the time.) It’s also nice, I suppose, to have a Mr. Store Leprechaun that I would actually want to use for the Nuns or whatever. I’ll probably never actually use him for that effect, though.

So, besides the nice heals, the He-Boulder has one other thing going for it, and that’s it’s various eye beams. Once a combat, you can use the free skill “Point at your Opponent” to have it fire off a beam. Most of the time, this just throws out a little damage. (Well, it’s a ton of damage early in the game, but it quickly becomes more trivial.) However, one in every 150 turns, it fires a “Major Ray” which does TONS of damage with the red ray, defeats an enemy outright with the Yellow Ray, or essentially uses Entangling Noodles on the enemy with the Blue Ray, which is pretty cool.

So basically, you have a Ghuol Whelp who gives you some extra Meat drops and works like a sometimes effective combat familiar. It’s a pretty well-rounded combination, and it’s pretty fun to use. The familiar equipment (which I annoyingly didn’t get, but got a lead necklace instead, grrr) helps the Major Rays recharge faster, which is a decent enough incentive to go to the Cake-shaped Arena in more casual runs, too.

Still, the fact remains that this review is late. You’d have to buy this familiar from the mall. I don’t know if it’s gone up in price, but if it has, over just the cost of a Mr. A? I can’t really recommend it. It’s neat enough, and I’m happy with my purchase, but it just doesn’t seem powerful enough to invest in, and certainly not enough to pay a premium for when you can get so many other neat things. I’ll keep having fun with it, though, at least until this run is over.

September 29, 2009

IoTM Review: Shugar-y.

Are we sick of Tomes yet? No? Cause, you know, this month’s IoTM (with the review barely in in time!) is the Tome of Sugar Shummoning. This is a tome that lets you summon 3 Sugar Sheets a day, which you can then change into a wide variety of equipment. These last for approximately 30 combats, then break into Sugar Shards, which are healing items.

Frankly, I think this is much more effective than the other tome I have, the Sticker Tome. In this run, I have used Sugar equipment a ton. It is amazingly useful in Hardcore, especially in Hardcore Oxy, where a day’s worth of summons can keep you in equipment for all of your day’s turns. The Sugar Shorts stat boost is nothing to sneeze at, and until you build your Legendary Epic Weapon or whatever, a Sugar Shotgun, Sugar Shank, or even Sugar Shillelagh for Seal Clubbers are all viable options. Finally, if you have Torso Awaregness, the extra substats from the Sugar Shirt are almost reason enough to have the tome right there, if you’re a serious ascender.

I compare this to the Sticker Tome, and the stickers just come up short. Sure, there are plenty of very strong enchantments on the stickers, but having to be stuck with the Sticker Sword really just kind of nullifies them for me. The main reasons you’d want to use it would be for things like substat and +item boosts, and both those things just don’t seem worth it if you’re having a lot of trouble killing monsters, which is going to happen if you get the sword early, at 10 power, to use these enchantments. I’m sure that more skilled players use the stickers all the damn time, but I have trouble getting myself to use them if I don’t have Double-Fisted Skull Smashing, so I can still equip another weapon, and even then I rarely think to use it. It just goes by the wayside.
For whatever reason, this temporary equipment clicks with me in a way that makes it feel slightly less consumable, and that makes me take advantage of it. That’s neat stuff. Well, it is to me.

So yeah, it’s another tome. But it’s a very good tome. It comes recommended. Plus, let’s face it, if you’re speed ascending in Hardcore, you need the Sugar Shirt anyway, so you’ve already got the tome. But, you know, at least you can feel confident that I agree with your purchase. Everyone cares what I think, right? That’s why I write on the internet. So people can care about what I think.
Right?

July 23, 2009

IoTM Review: Get Them Underfoot.

In July, the IoTM of the Month for the game called “Kingdom of Loathing” is the Bag o’ Tricks. I really like this one. Really like it. Yep.

First off, just look at those base stats for equipping it. +item? Yes please. And the MP regen and +spell damage just go great alongside a Chefstaff. It makes the early turns of a Mysticality class go so, so much easier, because you actually have the MP to cast spells and deal some damage with them. It’s completely worth equipping for spellcasters even without the other effects, although it perhaps wouldn’t be worth a Mr. A without them.

Probably the most powerful element of the bag is extending 5 random buffs on your person once a day. That can really save you some money, and is really fairly neat. It’s unfortunate that you have to unequip the bag to use this ability, as that can mean a lot of wasted clicks. Still, the bleeding edge Softcore players probably aren’t going to be actually equipping it anyway, when they could shieldbutt their way to victory with a Pilgrim Shield, so this benefit is probably all their going to get out of it. It’s probably worth it.

But the ability in combat is what impresses me the most. Opening the Bag o’ Tricks is a free action, and not only does it give you some strong buffs (+meat, +items, or +ML (Which I don’t have to remind you essentially equals +stats), depending on how you use it, but it also is a free attack every once and awhile. Dealing a free 40 damage every few turns really does help make annoying fights easier, and I rather love the Bag for that.

Basically, the Bag o’ Tricks is the perfect softcore item for me. It makes the game so much easier and more fun while giving me some new systems to fiddle around with and think about, to keep the game from being boring. I doubt it’s bleeding edge, and I rather doubt it will be talked about much outside of this month (although Val did lay out a complicated way where the bag is optimal, at least until you use up your charges of getting Chihuahua Underfoot) but I’m sure I will be loving the crap out of it on subsequent softcore Mysticality runs. I sure as hell am loving it all over the place on this run.

July 22, 2009

IoTM Review: Short Shorts

Over in the land of Twilight, the current garment that is all the rage is the Three-Speed Bicycle Shorts. This stylish pair of shorts comes in three flavors: First gear, Second Gear, and High Gear.

This is a solid item. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll be able to enjoy the real neatness of these pants until we get into some sort of ascension/retcon environment, though, as the neat thing is that they level up with you. Every five levels you get to boost the pants into the next gear. But how are they individually?

Well, the Second Gear is obviously the weakest. HP regen, while useful, just isn’t something I need right now, as an Elementalist. I never turn down HP regen, but I never look for it. Classes without a good healing skill could probably benefit more from it, though. There’s nothing wrong with the time reduction, though, on par with other equipment in that slot, and the +to hit is never going to be a hindrance or anything. It’s useful, but unimpressive. You’ll equip it for the -time spent and nothing else.

At the top end, you have an item that is clearly better than, say, the Xentrium Breeches, and gives some all-important PP regen. This is how I’ve been using them, and they really are quite good. Unless you’re looking for item drops, they are probably better than, say, the Amazing Technicolor Dreampants, though the random nature of the pants makes them more fun, to me anyway. Also, the fact that they’re crazy rainbow pants. But yeah, you’d be doing pretty good at most level 10 and above content in these things, perhaps disregarding the super-high level stuff with the dreamer’s clock.

It’s the First Gear that’s really the unknown quantity here. I just don’t know how speedrunning in this game is going to work. It certainly seems like +XP is going to be very useful to people starting a run, but I just have no way of knowing how useful, since the game doesn’t really have any sort of speedrun community or anything at the moment. Granted, at level 1, -5 seconds is a huge boon, and being able to dodge hits probably is to. It’s just… I don’t know. Anyone in the game who is serious enough to donate for these pants is probably way past the level while the first gear is useful, and without people to test it, who knows if it’s actually as good as it looks. Is this and the Letter Shirt or sports bra better than, say, the Exosuit at early levels? I just have no idea.

Still, this is probably worth your time. It’s got options, options, options involved with it, and that is something I am always down for, and it does have effects that are better than what’s out there. It is likely worth your time.

June 26, 2009

IoTM Review: But they cancel each other out!

Hey! Twilight Heroes had an IoTM. Well, two, really. What happened to them, eh?

Item number 1: Hobbes’ Nail Boots. Yay! An IoTM boot that isn’t Roderick’s Boots which is one of the few IoTMs I don’t have! Victory, or something!
But seriously, besides Roderick’s, there just isn’t a shoe in the same caliber as this thing. (The exception maybe being the Treader of the Dust’s Sandals, but that’s a high level only item.) There is never, ever a time when you don’t want an extra added boost of +item, so they’re worth it just for that. The additional melee damage is just icing on the cake, and the pounce attack is nice to have access to, even if it doesn’t seem to trigger ALL that often. Depending on what you’re doing, though, I could almost see the +combat being a hindrance. +noncombat does tend to almost always be more useful. Still, I certainly don’t mind it, and since you simply can’t get +item on any other boot in the game, this is almost certainly worth your stars.

The item number 2 would be the Mummer’s Gloves. Yay! An IoTM set of gloves that isn’t Roderick’s Gloves, one of the few IoTMs I don’t have! If you are a person who is ever going to be thinking of speed-running the eventual versions of this game, these gloves are clearly for you. +noncombat is going to get you far. Very, very far. That alone makes them worth having around, but the occasional stat boosts put it over the top. It’s nowhere near as good for that as the VR Helmet of course, since the VR Helmet boosts your basic XP gains too, but then again, it’s in a different slot, so they don’t have to compete. You can wear both!
The part I like the most, though, is the creating of the Invisible Box. This isn’t a combat skill or anything. You just use your gloves from your inventory to create a scaling defensive buff five times a day. I don’t know why that makes me so happy. I guess it’s just because, usually, such things give you an item that you can use for the buff? And then I never use the buff, or just give the items to other people. Somehow, having it just be used on yourself makes it more novel to me, because I will actually use it. If I don’t buff myself with it, I’m just wasting my uses, you know? And I do love extra defense. I’m a defensive kind of person.

So yeah, two pretty powerful, half-priced items. Pretty nice stuff. I would bet that the non-combat and stats of the Mummer’s Gloves would make it the better investment, but really, you can’t go wrong with either. Or both. I have both.
Yep.

June 24, 2009

IoTM Review: Nonsensical Time Travel.

So, it’s June. That means it’s the month of the crazy, wacky Super-Content Familiar. This time it is the Baby Sandworm.

It’s probably my favorite June familiar, hands down.

I’ve played all the previous June content areas. I own a Llama, too. Each of the other ones seem like puzzles to overcome in order to get ascension relevant consumables. You have to figure out how to rush through the Violet Fog to get your munchies pills or how to trick the Wormwood to get your Not-a-pipes with the minimum amount of turn investment. There is some funny, entertaining content in there, but it’s all just for the rewards. The Llama stuff was nice, in that it removed the puzzle to get you the items from a specific zone, which you can get while doing other quests. But it’s still just “beating the system for buffs and consumables.” That’s cool. People like that. But it’s not perfect for me, really.

The content that the Baby Sandworm gives you is a series of three, interconnected storyline quests, and that is why I love it.
To do this, they first just give the item people want the most from the content straight out. The sandworm drops Agua de Vida, a spleen for turns item. Wonderful. When you use it, then you get the ‘unlock” item, which isn’t trade-able. That’s an interesting drawback. But once you get into the actual quests, then you get into a quest throughout time. Granted, it makes absolutely no sense that you’re doing this quests by “remembering” what happened over time periods, especially in the future. But the content is entertaining and fun. Hell, it’s got a full in-game implementation of Hunt the Wumpus right in the quest! That’s pretty impressive.

Basically, I loved the quest. I’m going to love going through it several more times over ascensions to get all the rewards. I’m going to appreciate how wanting to do that content is going to make me actually use my spleen to be more efficient. I love this familiar.

And hell, it’s the first full Sombrero Mr. Store familiar. If nothing else, it’s a million times better than a normal Sombrero. There’s no reason not to get this. You know, unless you’re just opposed to donating, I suppose.

May 24, 2009

IoTM Review: It’s a Familiar!

I don’t know if you heard, but part of the revamp of the Cube quest was that you got, gasp, a permanent sidekick! Which was really damn cool! It doesn’t do anything worthwhile for someone who is farming and has like… a million clockwork ants, but once we get into a retcon or ascension kind of environment? I know I’m going to use the thing like crazy!

In any case, that change hit in the middle of April, and then, in may, we had the equivalent of Twilight Heroes’ first “familiar,” the highly implausible script. It teaches your understudy a new role, that of the grumpy old smuggler. This role is basically a combination of the Flea Market Trader and the Jujitsu Expert roles that your understudy can learn at the Firebird College at Philbin, but with a much higher level cap, and it does both roles at once, and it’s significantly more entertaining.

Basically, I am completely down for all those things. Item Find is never, ever going to be unwelcome, even if I’m the non-optimal sort who doesn’t always use it, and I much like Potato variants over in KoL, so I can totally see me being quite behind blocking attacks once I am lower level again and, you know, attacks could hit me. (Or this supposed very high level content comes out and I’m fighting enemies that can hurt.) From a usability standpoint, the grumpy old smuggler is a hit.

And, of course, it’s pretty darn funny from a comedy standpoint, too. It’s obviously full of Star Wars references, but the long, boring, old man stories my understudy tells that get Star Wars totally wrong and totally right make me grin. I only wish there was more of them. Although I never really thought of Han Solo as a grumpy old man…

But yeah, this IoTM is basically a complete win. Part of it, I’m sure, is that there aren’t any other IoTM-strength options for permanent sidekicks in the game. Once, perhaps, additional scripts get out there, the smuggler’s benefits may be significantly reduced, and less worth your time. I don’t know. But for the cheap that want to farm and for the future, the script is completely worth picking up, in my book. Yep. Completely.

Yep.

Do I end a lot of blog posts with yep?
Yep.

May 22, 2009

IoTM Review: Key To Riches

So apparently May is now “Wacky KoL Experiment May.” Or so it’s been said. The last one got generally bad reviews for being much, much too restricted! But this one, this one is going to be good, right? Maybe?

Well, it certainly was new.

There were actually two IoTMs this month. One was the Clan VIP Lounge Invitation, and the other was a piece of furniture for said lounge, a Pool Table.

There are some issues.

One, paying a Mr. Accessory for the Lounge Key seems like a decent investment. You automagically get access to a hot tub which does crazy HP healing 5 times a day, as well as a brand new Mr. Klaw machine which, while dispensing a bunch of silly, fun things, also can dispense a new familiar as well as a piece of gear that, if gotten on day one, would be extremely relevant. But that’s just it. It’s being put forth as an investment. You’re getting this with the promise that there will be more furniture for you to use and get benefits from. But on the radio show, Jick was talking about how it would kind of kill their revenue to actually make another piece of IoTM furniture, looking at the current numbers. Will it happen? I don’t know. Still, the healing in Hardcore is relevant enough for anyone wanting to be serious to pony up for that.

Two is the pool table itself. It costs 3 Mr. A’s, which is a huge expense if you’re on your own. It’s obviously not meant to be gotten that way, of course, as it’s for the clan, and is meant to be used by multiple people constantly. I pitched in a Mr. A for ours. But, of course, then there’s the issue of the Clans. Mr. Store stuff can’t disappear, right? But an empty clan does disappear, and clan-hopping is very important if you’re going to do a lot of Hobopolis runs. I haven’t heard confirmation that your clan would stick around, and hell, nobody is going to test that kind of thing with this expensive of an IoTM. I also feel like there should be a more straightforward way for multiple people to chip in for the table, if that’s the idea. I mean, I have no problem giving a Mr. A to Cris or Val and having them buy it, and I’m not in it for the glory. At the same time, it seems kinda silly that it commemorates who placed the table in the clan when that person probably didn’t pay for all of it, and perhaps not even for most of it. There’s something not optimal to how that works.
As far as the pool table itself goes, I’m pretty happy with it as something I paid 1 Mr. A for. Basically, it gives you some useful buffs 3 times a day, and you can choose which ones you get. Speedsters are going to love Hustin’, and I’m going to probably enjoy Mental A-cue-ity once I get back into normal things. There’s also a metagame where you play pool against people and rack up winning streaks, which goes on a leaderboard. There’s some talk about it being a rock-paper-scissors game, based on the buffs you pick, to beat people, but I don’t think anyone knows for sure yet. Either way, that kind of interaction with other players is something I’m for, though I would have preferred something a bit more interactive. It also would have been nice to have more detailed record-keeping of your own playing. I’d like to see my horrible win/loss record against Val or whatever, instead of just what my longest streak was and how it matches up with my clannies.

Either way, both seem worth getting yourself access to, since they do give tangible benefits and aren’t taking up a slot that could be filled by something else, since it’s an entirely new mechanic. Will it be expanded farther? I don’t know. We’ll see. There’s certainly a lot of potential in clan furniture, but I think there’s a lot of things that could stand to be worked out or stated clearly. Still, I’m not too unhappy with my 2 Mr. A’s of investment this month. Yep.

April 25, 2009

IoTM Review: Still a few more pieces to go for a full ensemble.

Prismatic Sports Bra!

It’s good!

Join me tomorrow when I’ll tell you th…

Okay, fine, a little more.

First off, the idea of it being a “sports bra” is, you have to admit, pretty humorous. Even as a female character, the idea of fighting crime in just a crazy color-changing sports bra is funny. So it gets points there.

If you were thinking that there were similarities between this and the Amazing Technicolor Dreampants, you would be correct! This is not a remake of the crazy rainbow pants, perse, but a slight change on the same idea. Different equipment slot, a few different powers, same constant randomness of useful effects in combat. It also seems to combine with the pants fairly well. I’ve had both of them running, and the similarity of their powers means I am more likely to have one of the ones I really want hit every combat. (I assume for most, that would be the +PP effects, or maybe the +XP effects.)

The one new effect on the Bra that I especially like is the +sidekick effectiveness. I remember when the judo kid gloves hit, and I was really worried about them being useless, and then as I used them, I realized how badass powerful they were, at least for farming. I haven’t unequipped them since. And when, with those equipped and with the bra hitting the right color, I have seen some crazy chip drops. It’s totally sweet.

I also especially like, message-wise, the message after battle when you hit on the +XP color. The idea of a hero actually doing that just makes me grin.

The one drawback to this item is the lack of a -time piece of equipment in the slot. Ever since the Xentrium Breastplate existed, I knew there was going to be this issue: It’s hard to justify putting anything in the shirt slot that doesn’t reduce time per turn. It is an especially hard sell, to those who own most of the IoTMs like me, to replace the Letter Shirt and it’s -15 seconds. I still don’t know if it’s worth it for the bleeding edge types, but I found that the recent inclusion of the Xentrium ingot to make full sets of Xentrium equipment really helps alleviate this. I basically just put on Xentrium gauntlets and boots, two slots that I don’t have IoTMs for because I missed Roderick’s gear, and that basically fixed the problem. It’s not as good as just the Letter Shirt, much less that AND these gloves and shoes, but dammit, I’m casual. I’m having more fun with the Bra on. The Letter Shirt is just a pure stat boost, the Prismatic Sports Bra is fun. I don’t have enough time to play my turns anyway. Heh.

Yeah, I dunno. I like it. Random is fun, I suppose, and this is random. Plus, hell, the idea of being a constantly-shifting rainbow-clad avenger of justice is just awesome. Admit it.