The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I used to be down on IoTM equipment. “Why would I equip that? It’s just going to fill a slot that I could use for some other cool thing I found in the game that may be more funny.” Then again, I used to be down on IoTM familiars for the same reason. I came around on familiars because I realized that using a different familiar each run changed things up, and the IoTM ones did different things than the normal ones. Hell, all my IoTM purchases are mostly for this reason: To have an ever-growing list of things I can do, and figuring out how to use them effectively changes the game up constantly, much like the theory behind “Standard” in Magic. So yeah, when I got the Haiku Katana, that all changed, really. Here was a weapon that was fun, did funny things, and really changed up my Muscle class game. I’ve been leaning towards Muscle classes ever since it came out because of this. I’m eager to get other pieces of equipment to really change up my game. This month, KoL has the Elvish Sunglasses, a Moxie-based piece of equipment. I snapped it up.

Now, I’m still in basementing hell and ‘waiting for the Hamster Times” limbo, which is fine, because I barely have any time to play anyway. But that means I haven’t really gotten to try it yet, like so many IoTMs. (I’m going to have a series of very eventful runs once I start ascending again!) I’ve been using it for the Moxie boost for basement checks, but, you know, that barely counts as being put to good use. I mean, the stats on it are great. Who wouldn’t want those bonuses? The +pickpocket is especially nice, what with all the very important new pickpocket-only items that are now available. It’s a bonus-granted machine to the moxie classes.

However, I like a good bonus, but I like entertainment value more. The Haiku Katana gave me both: It’s got really strong boosts for a Muscle class, and it has all these crazy skills I can use and silly Haiku text to read. I like that. The Elvish Sunglasses leave a little to be desired in this department. It grants me skills I can use based on instruments I have equippped. Now, the +5 Substats for “Play a Guitar Solo” is completely awesome and useful. The stun with drums, delevel with Accordians, and extra sleaze damage with flutes are also appreciated. However, this is going to really restrict what I equip. Now, I suppose if I was making my Legendary Epic Weapon, I could use that for most of the run. Especially as a Disco Bandit with a Shagadelic Disco Banjo, I’d be doing pretty nice. At the same time, so many of the ranged weapons I have, in the past, used during a run are not instruments. I normally make heavy use of the Beer Bong, Grease Gun, and Potato Pistol during a run. These are some of the strongest items at their levels (or at least, last time I played a Moxie class they were) and they’re not instruments. The last time I really heavily used instruments as a Moxie class was during my Disco Bandit hardcore run, and that was because I couldn’t pull all my good weapons like I normally can in softcore.

Basically, the sunglasses are asking me to make a hard choice. If I want to use the skills, I have to pick inferior weaponry. I’m sure most of the more hardcore set don’t care: From what I understand, if you’re speed-running, you use your Legendary Epic Weapon for the majority of the run. But it’s unfortunate that I’m not going to have quite the access to it as I would like. Why not have a fifth “vocal solo” skill for when you don’t have an instrument equipped? It could be worst than the rest, but I would appreciate it being there.

Still, I very well might change my mind about it by the time I do a run with it. Just the bonuses could be a huge lifesaver, and perhaps I’ll find there are plenty of instruments to keep me going for the whole run. We’ll see. As it is, I’m slightly disappointed in it at the moment. Not a whole lot. Slightly. I do appreciate it making the basement a little easier, if nothing else.

EDIT! LATE ADDITION!
So, I just remembered they recently added a bunch of ranged weapons to the game. So I checked them out! So many of them are instruments, and so many of them seem totally worth it! Obviously they had thought of that before they released an IoTM so dependent on having good instruments for most of the run, huh? Silly me. This makes me much more excited to try it out, both because it’ll be more useful and because I just realized I have a whole bunch of new weapons to find and try. Neat!

You know, that title would make for an interesting striptease, I’d think.

Marty Crouch’s Magic Chest is this month’s Twilight Heroes IoTM!
This is a really great item! Maybe I just like items that give me tons of items. But it’s a really great item!

First off, just as an equippable. There’s nothing else in the game that I’m aware of that gives you a percent boost to your spell damage. The closest thing in that slot is, what, the Enerbun Sphere? Which is only +20. At higher levels, the chest would be MUCH better. So that’s cool.

Of course, the main benefit are these combat items, and these are some pretty solid items. There’s a wide variety of just basic damage-dealers, but there are certainly some standouts. The Deja Voodoo doll is completely intense and game-changing in its ability to face the same monster twice in a row. It seems like anyone who was, for example, Ultra-rare hunting would need to have one of those in their inventory. The Red-Eye Mind Trick is equally game-changing, giving you a “free run away” mechanic, although it’s at the cost of a -items debuff. Still, it’ll be heavily used when the time comes to speedrun this game, I’m sure.

The coolest thing about the items, though, is that many of them are usable on other players. I love this stuff! However, they’re much more “tricks” than “treats.” They actually inflict very minor debuffs. This is… an interesting way for the thing to go. Still, it’s perhaps cooler than, say, the Nerf’d effect in Kingdom of Loathing. It’ll make those who like to grief more happy that way. Me? I’m just happen there’s yet another deck of cards in the game. Can’t have too many cards!

But yeah, I think this is an IoTM that I have little trouble in recommending. It’s effective and funny (a lot of the attack messages on the items? Great stuff.) and totally worth the investment, I think. Well, I mean, as long as you think investing in virtual items in a browser game is a good investment. I obviously do.

So, I’ve been grinding in Kingdom of Loathing! This is so we can actually beat Hodgman now that he’s all… the way he is now that there isn’t a bug involved. So we need a really high Seal Clubber, and I was already a Seal Clubber and I didn’t have any time to play my turns anyway… so grind grind grind!

However, that means I can’t actually, you know, use this month’s IoTM until, you know, after this month. I picked one up, because it seemed neat, but I’m mostly just going off of the wiki for attempting to judge its value. I may have to write another one later, after I do a 100% run with it, or something.

Still! Frumious Bandersnatch! It’s a volleyball!

Well, it’s a little more than a volleyball.
It seems like this would be a fairly useful Volley for speed ascenders, due to it’s “tuning” mechanic. Basically, depending on which color equipment you equip it with, it gives all of its Volleyball boosted experience to a particular stat. So you can have the Bandersnatch give you all Mysticality points, for example. That seems useful! However, the fact that you have to run 10 turns in the arena to get the equipment in hardcore may put a damper on it. I don’t know how much of a setback that is. It’s very possible that, over time, the more focused stats would speed things up for it to be worth it, but then again, since you have to bounce between the Llama, probably, and the Green Pixie… I dunno.

Still, the part that I think is cool is mostly the other part! Which is the fact that the familiar does special effects in response to what standard combat skills you use in combat. That just seems like a lot of fun, and would seem to be a good reason for me to actually use combat skills more often! Because I often don’t, if I can help it. I save MP too much. But seriously, just look at some of these effects. They’re seriously useful… extending the duration when you cast Entangling Noodles… giving you MP when you use Saucegeyer… (as if Saucerors didn’t already get too much MP from Burning Soul and such!) adding a stunning effect to Lunging Thrust-Smack and Shieldbutt? Those are really strong effects! Well, to me, anyway. And since I understand that people use Shieldbutt like… all the damn time, surely that stun effect would be useful to them too, if nothing else. A lot of the rest just gives you extra damage, but extra damage is good, too! That just seems like a lot of fun. I can’t wait to try that for a whole run. I’ll probably be a Sauceror for that one.

The thing has one more effect that I will likely never use, but I’m sure people will like. If you have Ode to Booze on when you go into battle with the Bandernatch, it gets drunk. When drunk, it won’t give you any combat skill bonuses, but if you run away, you can get a “free” run away, not spending a turn for the combat, as you can with, say, a Divine Popper or a tattered scrap of paper. Speed runners find this extremely useful! Less turns spent on pointless combats! I, however, never use these things. So, you know, this doesn’t effect me. Still, it’s a nice bonus on top of everything else cool about the familiar, I suppose. It just seems like, most of the time, if you need that effect you’d use one of those items, or Creepy Grin, or the effect on a navel ring of navel gazing if you’re already, you know, loaded up with Mr. Store gear.

Still, overall? It seems like a pretty fun familiar. I’ll let you know when I actually get to, you know, try it out!

That stupid song is stuck in my head from work. Ugh.

So, this month’s KoL IoTM is the libram of love songs. It’s yet another skill book! Cris was very sad. But I was, you know, still alright with it. I like IoTMs. They’re what keep me playing these games, trying the new items and seeing how to use them. So I was all about being able to Summon Love Songs. I snapped it up immediately.

Since this is a Libram, each cast of it increments the same counter that lets me Summon Candy Hearts. This hasn’t really been a bit deal for me. I have like… 4 gabillion candy hearts at the moment, so I can just summon love songs all day long. Eventually, it might become a tough choice. I kind of hope it does! It’ll probably be candy hearts for the beginning of a run for a few days, until I have a few Lavenders, Oranges, and Pinks to get me through, and then all love songs.

Now, each love song can do two things. They’re powerful combat items that deal elemental damage equal to various stats. (Well, okay, one does physical damage.) They can also be used up as a 5-turn buff with the interesting mechanic that the buff does more depending on how much duration you have. So if you have 5 turns left, it’s less effective than if you have 10 turns left, and so on, up to a cap. I think that’s a pretty neat mechanic.

There’s no denying that these items are useful. They are damn, damn good combat items. I’ve been extremely thankful that this book came out right at the beginning of my Basement dive because these combat items have made the combats trivial, which is one less completely frustrating thing to worry about. (The basement SUCKS.) I haven’t actually used them as buffs, though, the main reason being they’re so much more expensive to use. I’m using up the combat item to get a shorter effect than my candy hearts, though potentially a bit more effective if I use a lot of them. (For example, Withered Heart caps at +20% Items, +20 Myst, as compared to the Lavender Candy Heart‘s +3 to all attributes, +10% items, but I have to use 4 Love Songs of Disturbing Obsession to get up to that boost, and then continue to use them to keep that amount up.) But the candy hearts are so much easier to use in that regard. They’re going to be what I go to for buffs, even if the mechanic is neat.

And I guess that’s really the issue with this IoTM. I only really want this libram to summon powerful attack items. I don’t need the buffs. But if I had a Libram of Divine Favors, then I’d already have a much better source of attack items that would let me have a chance to get the all powerful divine popper. If I was someone who had the favors but not the hearts, then this is a great source of buffs. But to those players who have both, this really does have to seem mediocre. I mean, it has some really funny text when you use the attack items, but this really does seem designed for people who are missing a libram, or maybe even missing both. There’s nothing especially wrong with that, and I’m happy with it, because I was missing a libram. But it does seem like, if you have the other two, you could probably safely skip it. Maybe I’m missing something awesome you can use it for? But that’s how I feel about it.

Still, I’m going to continue to enjoy it greatly.

So, last I checked, it was February. So it’s IoTM time! Or it has been IoTM time. Yep.

Twilight Heroes offers a set this month, the foxy sombrero mask and the foxy caped suit. Since they have the word “foxy” in them and everyone in game calls me Foxy (Thanks to Val) I couldn’t NOT get them, even if they did nothing! Luckily, they don’t do nothing.

The standout piece, for me anyway, is clearly the sombrero mask. It offers an increase in farming profits, doubling my +chip bonus from the next nearest hat, the royal crown. I’d wear it, even if it didn’t have “foxy” in the title. Clearly, though, this is a reference to Zorro more than anything, and I think that’s done well. The other abilities of the hat, that of increased enemy fumble chance, is… interesting. Very interesting indeed, especially considering the ability when worn with the suit, which lets you, Zorro-style, emblazon some initials onto your enemies when they fumble for a little extra damage. Apparently Cris pushed for the customizable initials for me. Heh. I’m flattered, and I do think that part is awesome, even if the only obvious choice of initials for me is “fox”. Heh. Customization rules! Also, the idea of me carving out my initials with, say, a cannon makes me smile. In any case, I think the hat is a complete win, either as a farming aid alone or just being fun with the full suit.

The main problem I have with the caped suit, though, is that it’s a suit. Suits take up both the shirt and pants slots. I mean, for a character who’s going for ranged weapons and reflex, the foxy caped suit offers some nice bonuses. The combo with the hat isn’t too impressive, but is appreciated. (The real combo benefit is the one on the hat, as far as I’m concerned.) The -10 seconds makes it on par with the Xentrium Breastplate, which is almost a requirement. But the fact remains that, if I equip this, I can’t equip both the Letter Shirt or the crazy rainbow pants. Losing one of those I could handle, especially for the fun of the initials. (I keep my double tower shield always equipped for the battlecry, even though there are much, much better farming options for that slot) Losing both… I just can’t justify that most of the time.

Overall, though, I think this month is a pretty solid one. If nothing else, the hat is a good buy alone for anyone who wants to increase their in-game wealth with the added bonus of the fumble chance, and if you’re a player who doesn’t have, you know, most of the IoTMs like I do, the caped suit is probably a really good option if you’re playing, like, a ranged-attacking Gadgeteer or something.

Hey, I guess I should talk about the KoL Item of the Month, eh? No? Well, I do it every month anyway! Deal!

This month, in keeping with previous years, we have a form-changing elemental-aligned item in the container of Spooky Putty. I am a big fan of the previous such item, the Naughty Origami Kit. I bought it because I wanted the +Ghuol Whelp and ended up using more often for stat gains, but generally loved it all around, even if it didn’t have a completely welcome reception from the feedback on it I read. So I snatched up some Spooky Putty immediately. This item, however, is certainly going to turn some heads. It is Pow Er Ful.

How is it powerful? The more I see about it, the more it’s pretty clear that the Spooky Putty Sheet kinda breaks the game. Basically, it lets you copy a monster to fight later from your inventory at your leisure. There is all kinds of crazy shit you can get up to with such an ability. You could copy Dia De Los Muertos Borrachos monsters for the scaling stat gains and amazing drinks, and fight five of them every day for forever. You could copy one-time event content, and fight it all you’d like. You could copy Battlefield War Heroes, and fight as many Basingstoke-Pratts as you’d like. I’ve even been using it to break things myself, by copying Underwater monsters, and then fighting their copies to farm items without the restrictions of the gear you have to wear to be down there. It does CRAZY things. Crazy gamebreaking things. I’m sure the majority of these items that they sell are going to be sold exclusively for sheet use.
Still, there are other powerful parts to this item. The Spooky Putty Ball is probably going to open up all of my Moxie runs from now on, because it’s certainly one of the best low-level ranged weapons in the game. The extra stats on a hat from the Spooky Putty Mitre is probably second in power level to the sheet, because there’s only one other stat option for hats, and it’s higher level, gives less stats, and I believe it destroys itself, so the mitre is a welcome leveling boost. The Spooky Putty Snake is also just about the best low-level Chefstaff in the game, and will easily be used on Mysticality runs until I can equip the highest level staffs.
The only form I don’t get is the Spooky Putty Leotard. I mean, I guess they can’t all be winners? And you can equip it at level 1? But it’s not like Stainless Steel Slacks are hard to get at all. I have a pair. And if you’re looking for +meat drops, you are probably in the level 12 quest or are farming for meat, and should have no trouble equipping the Slacks instead. This is a form I can never really see me using.

Still, overall, this item is completely powerful and completely worth getting. You know… if you’re the kind of person who buys virtual in-game items to support games they love like me. If so, and you love KoL, this is a damn, damn good purchase. It’ll keep being useful for you. There’s less humor value than the Origami stuff, but all kinds of utility and game-breaking awesome.

This one is a simple one, but I like it a lot.
The GigaGuy Cannon is this month’s offering in Twilight Heroes, and beyond it being a blatant MegaMan reference (which I missed for far, far too long. Take away my Talking Time license or something) it’s also a pretty solid ranged weapon. Well, certainly better than the King’s Boomerang, in any case. (Though that comparison really isn’t fair, I suppose, since the cannon cost about 3x as many stars at the boomerang.)
It does decent attack damage, even after equipping my new Grimm’s Bulwark, but again, that might be just because I’ve been used to seeing the shitty damage from the Longbow of the Law and the Shortbow of the Stick for months. And it comes with several MegaMan 2 style abilities or whatnot, which are always appreciated. I actually found that some of the weaknesses carry over, too, which surprised me. The “GigaGuy Rapid Boomerang” does extra damage to metal enemies. I added that to the wiki. Heh. Do the others deal extra damage to those who are weak against them? I dunno. It’ll take more testing. But I think that’s a pretty cool little thing to add.
The real benefit of this gun, though, is that it makes enemies drop restoratives. After battle, you have a strong chance of either getting a GigaGuy Pellet or a GigaGuy Capsule. These only heal a tiny bit, but they drop after almost every battle and they’re greatly appreciated. They’re probably going to be the real reason someone equips the cannon. Well, that, and I suppose if someone isn’t an Elementalist like me and needs a source of solid elemental damage.
In any case, the point is, I quite like this month’s offering.

However, I believe it’s important to make an addendum to a previous review. After I wrote that, Ryme modified the Recylonizer so that it causes enemies to sometimes drop hunks of scrap metal. This is an item which is only used to recyclonize. It doesn’t do anything else. This really increases the usefulness of the Recyclonizer. Before, it was normally more useful just to autosell stuff and buy restoratives and caffeine and whatnot instead of recylonizing. Which this, you get a few free shots every day, enough to, say, get you two Oil Can Coffees for your caffeine or just get some of the buffs with no downside. It makes the Recylonizer much, much more useful. I understand Ryme was worried about giving people what amounts to free chips every day, and I agree that that is still a concern with this solution, but it really helped to make this one useful, at least for me. So I appreciate the change.

So, the Twilight Heroes IoTM is the Recylonizer Kit. I was hesitant to write anything about this one, because I really don’t know what to make of it. I mean, I totally called the fact that, soon, there would be equipment to set up in your hideout that would be untradable. Totally called it. And as such, I jumped immediately on board and ganked this one. But man, I dunno.
Basically, the Recyclonizer kit gives you access to a special store. You charge it up by putting items in, and it gives the kit a charge based on its autosell value. Then you expend this charge to get various consumables. There are attack items, sugar and caffeine, even a sidekick.
But I rarely use consumables.
Seriously, the fact that I have to give up items to charge this thing combined with the fact that they’re consumable makes me really hesitant to use these items. This is totally a personal problem, and not a problem with the item, but I just can’t see me using them often. When you add it to the fact that things like the Sugar Substitute and the Oil-Can Coffee aren’t better than the STROOPWAFEL and Mr. Tea at my level… I really don’t know. I hear Ryme has boosted them since I tried them, though, but it was more to make them equal, not better, and I’ve got plenty of Misters Tea and STROOPWAFEL are in what is going to be an extremely heavily farmed zone, so both are more than plentiful right now… I don’t know…
I hear many of them scale, or at least the Unstable Isotopes do, and that would probably be crazy useful to power-leveling individuals, but I don’t think I’m really going to do that, so that’s, you know, less useful.

I guess this has good points. As the first IoTM that is expended when used, it’s good for investing in, I’d think. I already invested in one. It also really seems like it would be a boon to high level people who need MP or whatnot. And the idea is really solid. It’s just, the more I think about it, the less it appeals to my play style at all. I guess I could make items to give to people that they can’t make, eventually? That’s something. But yeah, it just isn’t an IoTM for me. Still, if some awesome use comes out of them eventually, at least I’ll have one.

I always talk about IoTMs, don’t I? Well, I’m interested in them. So deal.

KoL’s offering is the Sugar Fruit Fairy, which is a sort of replacement for the supposedly extremely awesome Pygmy Bugbear Shaman. I picked it up, but I am personally unexcited.
I mean, I get that gaining stats and increasing item drops are the two most important things to do in KoL to be effective and quick at it. Thus, this fairyball which effectively does both is the shit. But it’s just so unexciting to me. I mean, I appreciate playing well, but I more appreciate playing easily and entertainingly. The MP drain this creates is an annoying cost to juggle, though I admit less than I originally thought. I thought it would be a HUGE pain, but during my short test so far, putting an origami “gentleman’s” magazine on it and using Spring Raindrop Attack left me with a positive MP gain, so I suppose it’s not so bad. But it’s still something to work around. My Wizard Action Figure isn’t nearly as powerful as this, but I would be much more eager to use it if I needed a fairyball because it does nothing but good and I really appreciate the deleveling and healing it does. I feel constantly like it’s doing awesome things, whereas, after every combat, I get that MP drain reminder message with the Sugar Fairy…
I dunno, I guess it feels like I’m so easily manipulated, to let something like that sway my decisions, but dammit, I play these games to have fun. If something FEELS more fun, then I should do that, right?
Still, I’ll give this one a full 100% run like all the others, and we’ll see how it does overall. I do like it dropping buffing items, maybe those will make me love it more, though they drop really rarely. But I’m not hoping for too, too much.

What? November IoTM Impressions? Don’t mind if I do.

Twilight Heroes has the Judo Kid Gloves on tap this month. They are… well, they look fairly unappealing at first glance. I was underwhelmed but assumed they would be fun. I was mostly right about the fun, but still, it’s very situational. Obviously, these only work if you have a steady supply of sidekickness, which is actually kind of rare for some classes who can’t summon their own in the game. You almost need the Plaid Couch to make it worthwhile. Luckily, I have 2, so I’m making good use of it. The +50% effectiveness comboed with the Mafia Informant it putting my chip drops through the roof. I’m wearing less +chip gear and getting more chips than before. It’s wonderful. The extra PP and Damage are also always appreciated. The extra PP effect can actually trigger during non-combats, too, which is just weird but neat.
Basically, though, it doesn’t do a lot. It just improves what was already good. It’ll get used if you get one, but, well, this might be an IoTM you can safely skip.

Now the Scratch ‘n’ Sniff Sticker Tome was an IoTM I was SERIOUSLY looking forward to. I’ve enjoyed all my other magic books, and I figured filling up that last slot on my Mystical Bookshelf would be really great. Not to mention the idea of a customizable weapon was just an awesome one.
I was quite disappointed.
I mean, the item is powerful, don’t get me wrong, but it’s completely just a series of buffs held back by the need to equip a weapon. That’s fine, I suppose, but it… well, I can’t seem to find many times when it would be worthwhile to load up a Scratch ‘n’ Sniff Sword with stickers and use the benefits. I mean, okay, it often would be worth it. But it’s never worth it enough for my stingy ass to use up the items. It doesn’t help it that some of the best uses for it, getting stats, are rather eclipsed by my Naughty Fortune Teller.
I mean, I suppose the real benefit of this is not in softcore, but in hardcore. There the extra stats from the Apple Stickers would be very useful, and getting a good sword with neat effects early would be more significant, since I can’t just pull my Haiku Katana or whatever. If you’re in hardcore, I’m sure it’s a great help. But for someone all softcore like me… it just feels like it doesn’t do quite enough. It disappoints me.
Maybe if I’d just get over myself and use my items, though, I wouldn’t have that problem. Hm. Either way, though, “Accepts Bedazzlement” is a great-sounding enchantment, isn’t it?