Everfull Dart Holster: Overview
2024-03-29 // IOTM Overview
This IOTM is clearly a love letter from TPTB to the Kingdom's best dart thrower, ThreeBulletHamburgler (#1993636). "But Scotch, 3BH hasn't been around for ages, and I didn't know that!" Well, yes. But just trust me. TPTB must know that his dart holster is ever-filled. They just KNOW, dude. Now that I'm done sharing my latest evidence-free conspiracy, let's skip past the debateable existence of birds and talk about the March IOTM: the Everfull Dart Holster.
General Summary
Once unpacked, your Everfull Dart Holster is an accessory. You better get used to accessorizing with it, because for the next 2.5 years, you aren't ever taking this thing off. The bluetext enchantments are solid, if not exceptional:
- +50% Combat Initiative
- All Attributes +10%
- Throw Darts in Battle
Gotta love more init. But what's that last one? Well, it's... complicated. Essentially, having the darts equipped gives you a "not-a-skill" set of skills, accessible via a dartboard image that shows up next to the monster's picture or via the skill menu, provided you aren't a Professor in the WereProfessor path. The dartboard looks like this:
This dartboard allows you to throw darts at the monster in accordance with the game's given body parts for the monster, staggering the monster for at least one turn, dealing damage, and activating combat skills for extra features dependent on the body part you hit. You start with three darts, your initial limit, and regenerate one per combat. Most of the skills reference your "dart skill level"; you gain points of dart skill as you throw your darts, at a rate of X dart level at X^2 darts thrown.
There are quite a few ways to throw darts in combat. In rough order of value:
- Throwing at the head, leg, or skull will decrease monster defense by 5X
- Throwing will, by default, delevel the monster by 5X
- Throwing at the wing/tentacle, stem/tail/beak, or arm will get you X stats to muscle, myst, and moxie respectively
- Throwing at the torso or pseudopod gives you some meat
- Throwing at the butt gives you 30-40% bonus item drop for the combat you used it in
- Throwing at the bullseye gives you a free instakill, with a number of turns of Everything Looks Red until you can use it again; prior to picking up the requisite perks, that is a duration of 50 turns, and you are 25% likely to hit on your first attempt at the bullseye; if you miss, you simply hit a random body part.
Each time your level increases, you get dart perks, choosing one random perk from a list of 3 out of 20 total perks. The perks fall into (roughly) three categories:
- BESPOKE BULLSEYE PERKS (5): There are 3 perks that increase bullseye hit chance (up to 100%), and 2 perks that decrease the turns of Everything Looks Red (from 50 down to 30)
- COMBAT IMPROVEMENT PERKS (9): There are 5 perks that add various flavors of prismatic damage to your damage dealt, 3 perks that boost your damage by 25-50%, 1 perk that allows you to throw a 2nd staggering dart,
- FEATURE UNLOCK PERKS (5): There are 2 perks that give you better stats from the statgain throws, 2 perks that expand your dart capacity (to a max of 5), 1 perk that increases the deleveling impact
- BUTTS (1): There is one perk that allows you to become aware of every monster's butt in the Kingdom, allowing you to get 30-40% more item drop on every monster you fight. Mortifying, honestly, I never wanted to think about Peanut's butt
For reference, here is a nice table to demonstrate how many darts you need to throw for various levels of value, perk counts, and what that corresponding level means to the X numbers mentioned above.
| Darts Thrown (X^2) | Dart Level (X) | Delevel (5X) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 5 |
| 4 | 2 | 10 |
| 9 | 3 | 15 |
| 16 | 4 | 20 |
| 25 | 5 | 25 |
| 36 | 6 | 30 |
| 49 | 7 | 35 |
| 64 | 8 | 40 |
| 81 | 9 | 45 |
| 100 | 10 | 50 |
| 121 | 11 | 55 |
| 144 | 12 | 55 |
| 169 | 13 | 55 |
| 196 | 14 | 55 |
| 225 | 15 | 55 |
| 256 | 16 | 55 |
| 289 | 17 | 55 |
| 324 | 18 | 55 |
| 361 | 19 | 55 |
| 400 | 20 | 55 |
This table will return later, because this IOTM is deceptively complicated.
Speedrun Applicability
Much like the 2022 June Cleaver, the simplest aspect of this IOTM is that it will (eventually) trivialize most combats you might have trouble with in an ascension. The darts start relatively weak as a combat action, but the damage dealt increases as your dart level increases, and as you add the damage perks (specifically the prismatic perks) you end up with a one-shot kill for most things you'll encounter in an ascension. Killing your encounters isn't usually a major problem, especially as Cleaver and Candy Cane Sword Cane are both still in Standard, but it's immensely helpful for cases like the WereProfessor, and it makes it (relatively) easier to survive with massive gobs of monster level.
Fittingly, the primary speed benefit of this IOTM is rooted in bullseyes. This IOTM, at max upgrades, gets you one freekill per 30 turns (by using "Everything Looks Red" (or ELR) to lock you out of aiming for bullseyes); that's a full 8 freekills in a 210 turn day. That's pretty wild; that's a strict 8 turns saved over -any- collection of IOTMs, with the only competing speedster-relevant power being doubled-stats from Red Rockets or a pittance of meat from your Crimbo Shrub. That's absurd value. It's quite comparable, at max upgrades, to a "better" version of the Spring Shoes and their "Everything Looks Green" freeruns. The shoes operate at that same time interval with a slightly worse boon (a free run versus a free kill).
There is a bit of a catch, though: you do need to max out your dart perks to make that happen. At base case, where you have 50 turns of ELR, you get a smidge over half that value, giving you 5 free kills in 200 turns instead of 8 in 210. And that cap isn't including the average delay on actually executing your bullseye; the base rate of a bullseye is 25%, which means that (on average) you'll get 1 bullseye every 4 attempts. Ergo, the 5-in-200 actually is more like 5-in-220. Yikes!
So, you need to upgrade it. But this is where the randomness rears its head. Due to the fact that you are always given a random selection of 3 out of whatever perks you don't have at each dart level, it actually takes a surprisingly long time to get the 5 bullseye perks properly staged onto your account. And due to the fact that only a single dart regenerates per combat, the tail end of the probability distribution takes an absurd number of darts to get to. Here is the table I shared before, but instead of looking at the 5X total, I've added both a "projected turns spent" (accounting for the rough NC to combat ratio you usually see in a KOL speedrun, and a minimal gob of freefights) and a probability estimate of the likelihood that you've fully upgraded your bullseye shot by that mark (with a quick and easy 5000 round trial for a basic probability distribution).
| Darts Thrown (X^2) | Dart Level (X) | %Bullseye Filled | Projected Turns Spent |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 0% | 1 |
| 4 | 2 | 0% | 5 |
| 9 | 3 | 0% | 12 |
| 16 | 4 | 0% | 21 |
| 25 | 5 | 1% | 33 |
| 36 | 6 | 3% | 45 |
| 49 | 7 | 4% | 64 |
| 64 | 8 | 8% | 83 |
| 81 | 9 | 11% | 105 |
| 100 | 10 | 12% | 130 |
| 121 | 11 | 13% | 157 |
| 144 | 12 | 12% | 187 |
| 169 | 13 | 11% | 220 |
| 196 | 14 | 9% | 255 |
| 225 | 15 | 7% | 293 |
| 256 | 16 | 5% | 333 |
| 289 | 17 | 3% | 376 |
| 324 | 18 | 2% | 421 |
| 361 | 19 | 0% | 469 |
| 400 | 20 | 0% | 520 |
This tells us a few distinct things. First, an entirely average run will have their bullseye perks by (roughly) turn 150. However, there's a huge range on that estimate, which leads to a lot of mild frustration; at most, a truly unlucky speedster might not unlock all the perks during your actual run, unlocking around turn 420. At a minimum, a stupendously lucky person might have their perks unlocked by turn 50. Visualizing the table in a quick chart, it's even clearer how frustrating the range is -- in about 25% of runs, you'll have your full five before turn 100. But in 20% of runs, you won't hit that mark until nearly turn 300.
[insert chart here once you've uploaded the branch]
At the end of the day, this isn't the worst thing in the world; after all, you'll still derive a decent amount of benefit from the IOTM whether your perks are fully upgraded or not. But the fact that you might end up in a crummier RNG space with the perks does have small implications for your overall routing and the expected turnsave; on net, you will gain 1-2 turns through an extra freekill or two with pre-turn-100 bullseye perks versus a run where you haven't gotten the full cohort until the late-200s. And if you lack the guaranteed bullseye, you essentially just have to spam it until you get it; in eight attempts in a day, you'd expect to have about 2 bullseyes on the first throw, 4 within 2-4 throws, and 2 taking 4+ throws, potentially up to 10-15 (if you are truly unlucky!). The problem with spamming it is that an inaccurate bullseye just picks a random body part, which means you're more likely to miss out on the other benefits you can get from the dart set.
"What other benefits?" Thanks, voice in my head. The primary one is "Butt Awareness", a perk which allows you to throw an arrow at any monster's butt; this adds a 30-40% item drop boost. That's a pretty substantial boost, as it's (essentially) a passive, since you regenerate 1 dart per combat and can keep throwing up a buttshot on every monster you hit up for your whole run once you've found the perk. If you're still leveling, some monsters can get you a handful of boosted mainstats. If you need meat, some monsters can get you a bit of meat. Because you only get 1 dart regenerates per fight, you would ideally refrain from using more than 1 dart per combat; one small (annoying) thing you can do is save up a few throws before Everything Looks Red wears off, hopefully ensuring that your 2-4 throws are more like 1-2 turns until your freekill pops off instead of 2-4 turns. But this also may not work, given that higher damage darts will (likely) kill the monster in pretty short order. Alas.
Regardless. At the end of the day, while the perk management ends up being some annoying randomness, the actual application of the darts is pretty straightforward. Equip it on turn 0, use it -every single turn- (yes, every turn, you want those perks!), level it up through your run, and convert as many fights free as you possibly can. Oh, also, don't use it on an inherently free fight. That's... pretty value destructive. (In unrestricted, make sure you don't use it outdoors if you're using Breathitins, either!)
2024 In-Standard Synergies
Thankfully, while the randomness of the perks made the last section longer than I originally anticipated, this ends up being a pretty short list of synergies.
- I already mentioned this earlier, but this IOTM is about as close to a must-buy for WereProfessor as possible. The Professor is absolutely terrible at combat, only able to use combat items... and darts! Because the dartboard isn't within the skill menu, your dart skills bypass the "no skills" restriction, and darts become the Professor's primary way to kill monsters.
- As with all free fights, the free kills synergize reasonably well with any part of the run where you want to conserve powerful IOTM-derived buffs. You can't string all of your freekills together (obviously), but any 30+ turn buff can at least get 2 extended turns with darts; depending on the path this may end up being 40ish familiar XP, initiative extended from your first Vanya's Castle trip to your last, item buffs extended across as many zones as possible, et cetera. Ergo, decent synergy with the buffs from the Cookbookbat (2022), Shadow Waters (2023), Monkey's Paw (2023) wishes, etc.
Overall Rating
The Everfull Dart Holster is a pretty easy tier 1 IOTM. It saves (roughly) 6-8 turns per day from the free fights, 1-2 turns through the always-on item drop boost, and some fractional turns from the combat simplification.