Bat wings: Overview
2024-11-06 // IOTM Overview
Dusk! With a creepy, tingling sensation, you hear the fluttering of leather wings! Bats! With glowing red eyes and glistening fangs, these unspeakable KOL speedrunners drop onto... wait, what? These aren't bats! They're just adventurers wearing bat wings, the October IOTM!
General Summary
The bat wings are a back item. The public has been eagerly awaiting a back item, and we got it! That thing you get from burning leaves is soooo last year. Let's take a look at this new source of creepy powercreep. It comes out of the box with the following bluetext enchantments:
- All Attributes +5
- Combat Initiative +100%
- +50% Food Drops from Monsters
- "Find Fruit"
- "Random bonuses underground"
- "Use some bat skills"
First three are quite self-explanatory. "Find Fruit" is... well, it's what it says on the tin. About 20% of your combats, you will get a free fruit at the end of your combat. "Random bonuses underground" refers to (as you might expect) bonuses when you are adventuring in an underground zone. Every combat, you get one of 4 options: either a level-based HP/MP restore, a "creepy remains" drop (skeleton bone/loose teeth/broken skull), a bat guano, or 5 turns of a +10% combat initiative effect.
The "bat skills" refer to three distinct skills, each of which can be used 11 times per day:
- Swoop like a Bat is a combat skill that gives a (nearly) guaranteed pickpocket that doesn't remove the stolen item from the monster's drops.
- Summon Cauldron of Bats is a combat damage skill that gives 5 * LVL damage (both spooky and physical), with a group damage multiplier.
- Rest upside down is a non-combat restore for 1000 HP and 1000 MP.
Apart from the bluetext, it does a few more things. But we'll discuss those in applicability...
Speedrun Applicability
First off, the equipment enchantments. +5 to all attributes may not be too great, but the other enchantments are quite swell. +100% Combat initiative represents a huge chunk of init for Vanya's Castle and The Defiled Alcove. In an uncontested slot, this is free power! +50% Food Drops can matter for hunting wet stew parts as well as blasting soda. We've seen this before, and it's just as welcome as ever. The fruit-finding and random bonuses underground are cute, though they don't matter a ton. Finding a lime might be able to help fix a lair stat test, but in any non-avatar path, that is (likely) not a consideration. Could perhaps help a runner trapped in a route that has Blech House before you do the Orchard quest, by providing you extra stats for the Blech House stat test.
The bat skills are great, as well. The upside-down rest is an 11/day 1000 HP/MP restore, perfect for casting skills at the start of a run or whenever else. Cauldron is damage -- useless now, but could be cute in a season or two for some low-power avatar path.
The real meat of the skills comes from the Swoop. Swoop is an 11/day pickpocket-duplicate. You can only use it once per fight, but it removes a ton of headache from getting Filthworm glands. Being a duplicate rather than a pickpocket-steal means you can even get that drop again at the end of combat. Very, very helpful for getting additional bowling balls or stone wool. 11 uses per day is also a pretty big number, so there's ample opportunity to experiment with this skill; creative use of your swoops has the potential to be a big leaderboard differentiator.
If all the IOTM did was the bluetext stuff noted above, it would be a very, very good IOTM. But it's better than that, because it does a whole bunch of other things!
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Five times per day, the bat wings will make a turn-taking fight free. Although this is something you can't reliably control, it also will not trigger the 1000-meat free fight cap, which means you can wear it into Themthar Hills without fear. This is just a flat 5 turns saved, every day!
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The bat wings have a specific underground bonus of note -- they solve the Bat Hole! The first time you adventure in Guano Junction and the Ratbat Burrow, you'll get one sonar apiece. This lets you unlock the Beanbat Chamber, which will give you an enchanted bean for the Level 10 quest. Best of all, this all is completely free! What!!!
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The bat wings also have a really powerful effect in the Penultimate Fantasy Airship that allows the regular noncombat to give Immateria or the SOCK after enough turns are spent in the zone. It also cuts the necessary delay to burn in the airship from 25 to 20. Prior to the bat wings, the airship could cost anywhere from 26-50 turns. Now it's 20-30. Completely wild stuff; this really cuts down on bad RNG in a historically infamous zone, which would have been worth it alone. With all of the other bonuses attached to this IotM, it's a no-brainer.
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The bat wings allow you to leap across the chasm bridge when your fasteners/lumber are at 25/25 instead of the usual 30/30.
2024 In-Standard Synergies
Strangely enough, this IotM does not have a lot of synergy with other items in its Standard set. Almost all of the uses are good without needing additional IotMs, which makes this a very good starter IotM.
2024 Aftercore Synergies
Although nobody would say no to an additional 5 free fights per day, the bat wings really don't have a ton of good uses in aftercore. Maybe you'll start your swooping empire?
Overall Rating
We rate the bat wings a tier 0 IOTM. The math here is complicated. At a minimum, it is worth 5 turns a day from the free fight coercion. The swoops are worth a bit under a half turn apiece, for 5 turns from your daily swoops. So you're around 10 turns saved on just the daily flags. For whole-run help: the bat hole stuff saves 3-4 turns. The initiative and food drop combine to be worth 1-2 turns. There's a huge range on the turns saved by the RNG mitigation on the airship -- we'll say 10 turns on average. The smut orc bridge progress is worth 2-3 turns. That adds up to about 15-20 turns saved through once-per-run stuff. So, in a one-day, you're looking at a bonkers 25-30 turns saved, and a 17-19 turns saved in a 2-day. The power level of this IOTM is simply batty folks. Get one ASAP!