Crown of Thrones/Buddy Bjorn: a Retro Review
2024-03-02 // IOTM Retro Review
Most IotMs are self-contained capsules that ship once and are never revisited. Occasionally they have explicit synergy and talk to each other, like the Tunnel of L.O.V.E. offering you toast if you own a Space Jellyfish or the autumn-aton bringing back Cookbookbat food. But every now and then, an item is released that ends up getting new functionality whenever certain content is added to the game. These tend to be clustered early on in KoL's life, with the most recent being the Fancypants Scarecrow from 2011. However, none have been quite as diverse as the Crown of Thrones, and its subsequent reprint Buddy Bjorn.
What does it do?
This is a hat with a little chair on it for one of your familiars to sit in. Heavy is the head that wears the throne.
The Crown of Thrones is a hat, with a plain looking "Put a Familiar In It!" enchantment that also promises the enthroned familiar a point of experience per fight. Actually sticking a familiar into the Crown results in an extra corresponding buff appearing. Some examples from the time of release include:
- +10 Monster Level from the El Vibrato Megadrone
- +2 tuned stat per fight, with Killer Bee for Muscle, Hovering Sombrero for Mysticality and Mariachi Chihuahua for Moxie
- +5 Familiar Weight from the Misshapen Animal Skeleton
- All Attributes +10 from the Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot
- So-So Resistance to All Elements from the Pet Rock
On top of that, the enthroned familiar will act in combat, providing an additional benefit. These tend to roughly split into two categories - creating extra bits of meat/bespoke item drops or combat assistance via damage/staggering/regeneration. There are a few general behavioural patterns, with examples for each being:
- guaranteed first N rounds of combat, such as 10-15 MP per turn from the El Vibrato Megadrone for the first three rounds
- at some point once per combat, such as the nugget drops from the various elemental gravy fairies
- fixed chance per round, such as the 50% stagger chance from the Mariachi Chihuahua
How powerful was Crown of Thrones at the time?
The El Vibrato Megadrone lowers itself down over your temples and shoots a beam of energy through your brain. Whee!
Back in 2010, MP and stats were quite hard to come by in softcore. Runs tended to rely on the haiku katana for the former, and powerlevelling being a necessary evil led to day one Spooky Putty copies trying to generate resources for as many ten-leaf clovers as possible. These would subsequently turn into efficient stat-granting non-combats in Spookyraven Manor. A number of pulls were devoted to gear with paltry-looking stat gain boosts - when not copying monsters, Spooky Putty folded up into its mitre form for +3 stats per fight. Putting together enough gains would hopefully reduce the time spent levelling while not accomplishing anything else of note.
In its primary mode of operation, the Crown of Thrones helped out with both of these areas. Putting the El Vibrato Megadrone in it yielded the aforementioned +10 Monster Level enchantment, along with an average of 37.5 MP per combat. That was twice what the haiku katana was making, with stat gain to boot! The difference is evident in stupac2's two mid-2010 softcore records, a pre-CoT 2/531 from March and post-CoT 2/505 from July, with the Megadrone's mana fountain leading to within-encounter MP generation leaping from 7056 to 11297. Since the Crown was providing both more MP and stats than the haiku katana, the weapon slot was no longer needed for MP production and the ice sickle made a return to further amplify stat gain. The 2/531 needed to get 2451 Moxie out of Haunted Ballroom (the Moxie power-levelling zone of choice) with seven clovers, while the 2/505 only needed 1917 Moxie and four clovers. Not all of these gains can be attributed to the outfit changes brought about by the Crown's release, as the later run also had the benefit of Juju Mojo Mask along with inherent run-to-run variance, but it certainly didn't hurt.
The MP hose coupled with stat gain was just part of what the Crown ended up bringing to the table. Pretty much all the outlined example enchantments ended up useful in some form or other over the course of a run. If there was enough MP, stat gain could be further cranked by switching to Mariachi Chihuahua with its +2 Moxie per fight (more than the +1.25 main stat the +10 Monster Level was bringing in at the time). The Chihuahua's high stagger chance is nothing to sneeze at either for survivability. An extra five pounds of familiar weight meant coaxing an extra runaway from the Bandersnatch, and the flat buff to all stats was surprisingly handy for prematurely sneaking into various zones such as the Haunted Bedroom. Back then stat requirements were an actual thing that kept you out of zones rather than a gentle suggestion to prevent you having a bad time. The elemental resistance buff was more of a low-skill ascender perk, allowing for effortless clearing of a handful of places in the game that checked for that sort of thing. Various familiar behaviours were of use too - stupac2 can be seen chomping two candy canes in the 2/505, both of which fell out of the Crown with one of the December IotMs in it. The Astral Badger drops mushrooms that allowed for the easy creation of a grue egg omelette in run if heavy turn generation was desired. The Green Pixie provides bottles of tequila, which can be used to mix drinks. While limited to then-suboptimal Muscle classes, harvesting nuggets from elemental fairies could lead to subsequent wad creation to fill out a bit of empty spleen. The Crown offered quite a few options!
An interesting aspect of the IotM was that it forced you to venture out into areas of the game you may not have otherwise seen to reap some of its benefits. Getting the Megadrone was the only time I interacted with the El Vibrato content, and I'm sure that the Mariachi Chihuahua was the main motivator for some to clear the revamped nemesis quest as Accordion Thief. It also casts some IotMs in a different light - were it not for their aforementioned item drop perks, I probably wouldn't have bothered getting the Badger, Pixie, or Ancient Yuletide Troll. While its prime occupants were freely accessible to all (aside from a brief period after release when all the +2 Mysticality per fight familiars were IotMs), being able to coax out bits of extra functionality via old IotMs was an interesting touch.
A couple of developments were in store for the Crown in the coming years. Within months of its release, it became perfectly viable to kill Naughty Sorceress tower monsters without the use of their corresponding combat item. The Mariachi Chihuahua's 50% stagger chance was handy as part of a layered setup to keep the monsters out of commission as Wrath of the Trickster God chewed up their health. June 2011's Li'l Xenomorph brought a +15% Item Drop enchantment to the Crown for the first time, and created a new familiar behaviour of dropping items in a non-guaranteed fashion. The biggest Crown shake-up came with 2014's yearly familiars, which brought combat rate alterations as enchantments along with drops of their respective spleen and content-unlocking items right out of the hat. This was likely a foreshadowing of Crown's upcoming reprint, with the Buddy Bjorn releasing in February 2014 and moving to the far less contested back slot. While not mutually exclusive, wearing both the Crown and the Bjorn has both worn familiars act with 50% likelihood, discouraging concurrent use.
What have you done for me lately?
From an ascension perspective, the Crown/Bjorn's initial prime use of stats and MP can now be trivially gotten elsewhere in unrestricted with no need to expend pulls. When compared to other softcore gear of yesteryear, the Bjorn has still aged quite well though, and actually remains a decent enough pull in unrestricted. The item drop mechanic becomes its main draw, with the Puck Man making up to 25 yellow pixels a day this way. This halves the required familiar combats to produce a yellow submarine, saving six turns versus unlocking the Mysterious Island of Mystery the standard Shore way. And since you already got the Bjorn out of Hagnk's, it also offers the only +5% Combat Frequency in the back slot without needing to commit to a carpe, and can squeeze out an extra runaway from the Bandersnatch. Maybe even a second one if you don't get ghostly reins from a protonic accelerator pack ghost - just bjornify Garbage Fire for a bit to get a burning paper crane. Get some tequila from the Green Pixie, and mix up a Mysterious Island iced tea to help out with clearing out the Zeppelin Protesters. In classic Crown/Bjorn fashion, the various extra perks just keep coming.
The drop functionality is also the Bjorn's main draw in aftercore. Being able to harvest nuggets, warbear whosits or whatever else often ends up producing sufficient value per adventure to be worth running. This transfers over to world events and dungeon diving as well, with the main competition in the slot being... the Buddy Bjorn with the Misshapen Animal Skeleton providing extra weight for Riftlet variants along with a trickle of meat.
An interesting application of the Bjorn comes in Community Service. A bjornified Garbage Fire can generate more drops than what would have been feasibly gotten out of just running the familiar. The extra newspaper can become burning paper jorts, which when combined with a bjornified Mechanical Songbird save two turns on the Spell Damage test. Add in one of the multitude of +5 Familiar Weight options during that test and the Bjorn ends up being a three turn saving pull, a rarity in high end Community Service. Your mileage may vary though - I had just enough odds and ends in Spell Damage to get pushed over the next threshold in both categories. There are various other enchantments, like +25% Booze Drop from the Party Mouse, that can be of use in other tests too, but helping with Familiar Weight and Spell Damage are the big ticket Community Service ones.
What's the take, Jake?
At the time of release, the Crown brought more MP and stats to a softcore starved for both, along with a bunch of other nifty tricks enabled by its other enchantments and drops. The Crown since largely morphed into the Bjorn, and power creep did a number on the various enchantments. The unique item drop mechanic made sure it still held up better than most of its softcore IotM contemporaries though. There is a chance the Crown/Bjorn have not said their final word, as any new familiar brings extra functionality to it. So who knows!
- How powerful were the Crown of Thrones/Buddy Bjorn at the time? 4/5; provided a bunch of stuff ascenders both knew and didn't know they wanted, all in one package
- How powerful are the Crown of Thrones/Buddy Bjorn now? 3/5; a universally useful aftercore back equipment, a potentially phenomenal pull in Community Service and a respectable pull elsewhere
- How flavourful is the item? 3/5; each familiar gets to have a unique set of messages, and some are quite amusing - like a goat baking you a pizza while sitting on your head