Mini Kiwi: Overview
2024-06-28 // IOTM Overview
I'm not the only one who thinks it's weird that kiwis have hair, right? The fruit. They're fuzzy little guys! My wife gets kiwis pretty frequently and I'll reach into the fruit drawer and think "hey, there's a little round hamster in here, that's weird" before realizing that I am perhaps the weird one for immediately thinking every small fuzzy thing is a hamster. Anyway. Now that I've shared intimate personal details with you about my opinions about fruit, I'll inform you that this intro was a ruse, as this familiar isn't the fruit at all... it's a teeny tiny version of the beloved New Zealand classic, the kiwi bird. Welcome to the Mini Kiwi, can I take your order?
General Summary
The Mini Kiwi is a familiar. It is a combination between a volleyball-type and a leprechaun-type familiar. Which means that when equipped it will:
- Increase meat drops at a rate of
(220 * weight)^0.5 + (2 * weight) - 6 - Increase post-fight stat gains by
2 + (weight/5)
In addition to those two benefits, the uppercase Mini Kiwi will drop lowercase mini kiwi throughout the day. The rate has been spaded to be a 0.5% chance per pound to drop a mini kiwi, which goes up to 0.75% if you equip the aviator goggles. (This means a 100 pound Mini Kiwi drops the fruit ~50% of the time, and 75% of the time with goggles.)
The fruit version of the mini kiwi is, by itself, a pretty crappy food item with low statgain and 2 adv/fullness. The real trick is to save up your kiwis and spend them at the IOTM's bespoke store, the [kiwi kwiki mart]. There you can buy many, many things. Many of them are completely unremarkable, but a few tiny ones worth noting:
- For 2 kiwi, you can purchase a mini kiwi bikini, a +60 sleaze damage accessory for your zeppelin mob needs. You can also wear more than 1, so 6 mini kiwi can convert to +180 sleaze damage.
- For 3 kiwi, you can purchase a mini kiwi silicon tiepin, a +30% initiative accessory.
- For 3 kiwi, you can purchase mini kiwi intoxicating spirits for a 4 adv/drunk booze. (Only one per day, tho.)
- For 1 kiwi, you can purchase a mini kiwitini for a poor adventure yield booze that gives 15 turns of +50% moxie experience gains.
- For 3 kiwi, you can purchase a mini kiwi antimilitaristic hippy petition, a potion for just 5 turns of -10% combat rate.
- For 5 kiwi, you can purchase mini kiwi aioli, which gives the next food you eat +1 adventure per fullness (like the old Milk of Magnesium effect).
- For 3 kiwi, you can purchase mini kiwi digitized cookies, which is a 4 adv/fullness food of 1 fullness.
Speedrun Applicability
I'm not going to sugarcoat it -- in most ascensions, the Mini Kiwi is basically just a significantly nerfed version of the Cookbookbat. Where the Cookbat offers up 6-10 adventures per fullness for its food items, the Mini Kiwi offers 4-5, which is a tiny bit better than the kinds of food you can ambiently encounter and craft in a run, but not by all that much. The Cookbookbat also offers essential buffs, like 100% item/meat and 200% initiative; the Kiwi offers... well, a pretty mediocre group. The bikini is pretty nice, but largely unnecessary for those with full standard sets, as wishes and the Candy Cane Sword Cane make the 60 sleaze significantly less valuable in the scheme of the Kiwi's standard period. 30% init isn't changing your life. The moxie experience gains will likely be a useful little helper in a post-trainset leveling world, but it's not -that- much. And the combat rate potion is so low duration that it's difficult to properly use in a post-endless-freerun world.
Note I said "most", however. In the active challenge path "11 Things I Hate About U", the Mini Kiwi is a bit better. In this path, equipment and consumables with Is in the name gain significant buffs, enchantments, and power so long as they avoid Us. That means that there are a few more benefits in the Kwiki Mart.
- The mini kiwi invisible dirigible is worth +30 familiar weight in-path.
- The mini kiwi intoxicating spirits is a 4 to 13 adventure booze in-path.
- The mini kiwi digitized cookies are 12 adv/fullness in-path.
- The mini kiwi bikini has an additional 70% meat drop.
- The mini kiwi silicon tiepin has an additional 80% meat drop.
- The mini kiwi whipping stick has an additional 70% item drop.
- The potions, instead of lasting for 5 adventures, last for 20+ in-path.
This is good enough that you probably do want to run the kiwi enough to snag the accessories, and if you're going for turnbloat, you can run it even more to try and get a ton of extra turns. But again, that's 1 path out of 44.
2024 In-Standard Synergies
I struggled to come up with any real synergies for the Mini Kiwi. In fact, I struggled enough that I am reasonably confident there just straight up aren't any in-standard synergies. At least not yet. Anything in the future that provides a way to turnlessly acquire a familiar's bespoke familiar equipment will synergize reasonably well with the Kiwi, as you really do want to get your Kiwis as fast as possible to use the many other more-useful standard familiars.
However...
2024 Aftercore Synergies
There is one important aftercore synergy that's worth noting.
- When placed in the Buddy Bjorn or the Crown of Thrones, the Mini Kiwi has a tiny chance to drop a mini kiwi once in each of the first 3 combat rounds. It ends up that you get a mini kiwi roughly 8% of your combats with the enthroned Mini Kiwi. (Funny enough, this was slightly nerfed. Originally it could drop its 1/fight in any combat round, leading to incredible overproduction of mini kiwi to the degree that mall prices crashed to nothing. Could've been good arbitrage!) Also, of note -- the 8% figure is based on a sample size of 907 combats from TES. We're confident about the 3 round restriction, but my thought is that it may be slightly different from 8% when actualized over eons of farming and ascension. Still, better to put real numbers here than allude to spading.
Overall Rating
We'd rate the Mini Kiwi a tier 5 IotM. That's... pretty low, folks. This is one of the least impactful speedrunning IOTMs in years. If we are rating it solely on the current challenge path, it might sneak up to tier 3 due to the extra turnbloat potential leading to easier daycount hits and easy-to-access equipment with incredible enchantments. But on net, this is a pretty big clunker. Would not begrudge anyone who skips it, as cute as it may be.