McHugeLarge deluxe ski set: Overview
2025-01-03 // IOTM Overview
The McHugeLarge deluxe ski set comes as an enormous duffel bag. That's right, kids, duffel bags are BACK. And by BACK, I mean that's where you wear it. On your back. You know, like a... duffel bag? Wait, what? I actually looked this up because I got confused -- according to the internet, a haven of truth devoid of liars and cheats, it's now haute couture to wear a duffel bag like a backpack. The acclaimed "backpacks.global" website claims that wearing a duffel bag on your back looks "stylish and modern", which means that I am officially less in-the-know about modern fashion than TPTB. Oh well. At least I can ski off my embarrassment.
General Summary
The McHugeLarge is autopulled as a back item, the McHugeLarge duffel bag. It's a decent enough back item, featuring +15% item drops, the maximum TPTB will ever place on a back item so long as Cannonfire40 draws breath. But if you go to your equipment page, you can [open] the duffel bag, allowing you to get at four more pieces of equipment inside. These pieces are:
- The McHugeLarge right pole, a 1-handed weapon with +25% weapon damage, along with access to the combat skill "McHugeLarge Stab"
- The McHugeLarge left pole, an offhand with +25% spell damage, along with access to the combat skill "McHugeLarge Slash"
- The McHugeLarge left ski, an accessory with -5% combat, along with access to the combat skill "McHugeLarge Avalanche"
- The McHugeLarge right ski, an accessory with +5% combat, along with access to the combat skill "McHugeLarge Ski Plow"
However, those are only the base enchantments. As you equip more pieces of the gear, you add additional hot damage, cold res, and initiative to the mix on all pieces of the gear. For a simple table, here's what to expect for the extra boosts as you equip more and more gear.
| Pieces of Gear Equipped | Per-Gear Bonus | Total Bonus |
|---|---|---|
| One Piece | None | None |
| Two Pieces | +1 cold res, +5 hot damage, +10% init | +2 cold res, +10 hot damage, +20% init |
| Three Pieces | +1 cold res, +5 hot damage, +10% init | +3 cold res, +15 hot damage, +30% init |
| Four Pieces | +2 cold res, +10 hot damage, +20% init | +8 cold res, +40 hot damage, +80% init |
| Five Pieces | +3 cold res, +15 hot damage, +30% init | +15 cold res, +75 hot damage, +150% init |
Quite a lot! In addition, here's the lowdown on the combat skills you get from each of the poles and skis.
- RIGHT POLE: McHugeLarge Stab deals physical and sleaze damage to your foe. (Once per fight)
- LEFT POLE: McHugeLarge Slash makes your opponent bleed, which makes them easier to track -- it's a sniff, making them much more likely to appear in their native zones! (3x per day)
- LEFT SKI: McHugeLarge Avalanche clears the area of monsters, forcing a noncombat adventure to happen next (3x per day)
- RIGHT SKI: McHugeLarge Ski Plow delevels your foe (11x per day)
Finally, wearing all five pieces of the gear counts as wearing the eXtreme Slopes Gear for the purposes of the 2nd stage of the Mt. McLargeHuge quest. Neat!
Speedrun Applicability
Let's start with the equipment bonuses. First off, the cold resistence is a fantastic amount. It does take up several slots, but it also ensures that you only need one bembershoot, which means that instead of summoning 2 Mmm-brr mouthwashes alongside 3 bembershoots, it's now effectively costless to summon an extra mouthwash. Beyond that, the back slot was uncontested and you were only getting 2 cold res from the Apriling Tuba in the weapon/offhand slots. That means we're netting +11 cold res and 1 extra mouthwash from the ski set, dramatically easing the leveling picture for us. Great stuff.
The two best enchants beyond the cold res, to me, are the +/- combat skis. It's rare to get that kind of equipment on turn 0, and as discussed in the Peace Turkey article, combat rate modifiers that can be applied to every search in your run are inherently pretty valuable.
In terms of the other modifiers... the initiative is nice, though I think that is one where it's pretty unlikely to be a major help; there are better contenders in almost every slot for initiative, so you'll almost always be better off simply equipping the higher base equipment (Bat Wings, Spring Shoes, etc) rather than the McHugeLarge gear. The hot damage may help mildly with the Tavern, though my guess is that we'll just use Song of Sauce to simplify it. The %weapon/spell damage is... fine. People who loop Community Service runs might use it?
With the bonuses down, let's turn to the skills. The deleveler and the damage skills are fine -- the usual sort of "throw on a few combat trivializers" move that makes IOTMs relevant and comfortable for people who aren't bleeding edge speedrunners. That leaves two:
- The noncombat forcer (McHugeLarge Avalanche) is awesome. One month into the year and we've already clawed back over half the NC forcers we lost from last standard! Mathematically, a marginal noncombat force is worth about 2 turns; three of them is a great boon to the masses.
- The sniff skill (McHugeLarge Slash) is also pretty neat. Current spading indicates that it is essentially equivalent to Transcendent Olfaction. There's probably an entire post I could write on proper use of sniffs and why they're nice, but the general gist is that proper use of sniffs will save you resources generating monsters in zones where you need to encounter several of a single monster multiple times. One good olfaction will save (in general) some fraction of a banish, with higher fractions the more banishes you have to spend.
Finally, there's the lovely extra touch that the equipment can serve as the eXtreme Slopes outfit. In order to make it to the top of Icy Peak, you need a way to scale the peak. You can either do so via eXtreme stunts or the ninja gear. Traditionally, everyone grabbed the ninja gear, as it just required fighting three assassins. However, due to Nerf Day 2025, assassins are no longer copiable -- this means that fighting three assassins is actually kind of a pain. You can expect roughly 11 turns in the Lair of the Ninja Snowman to get 3 naturally. Since 5 of those are in delay (assuming D1 shen snakes), you can think of that as costing you 6 turns.
Conversely, getting the eXtreme Slopes gear (usually) takes 5-10 turns by itself -- the drop rates are brutal and the combat rate of the zone is exceedingly high. And that isn't even the end to it, as you still need 3 turns to the top -- once you have the outfit equipped, you need one superlikely, then two noncombats in a 95% combat rate zone. But cutting the 5-10 turns of finding the gear makes things a good bit more interesting; instead of a tradeoff of 8-13 turns versus 6, the tradeoff now the aforementioned 6 turns versus one superlikely and two forced NCs. Where it was a laughably obvious choice in favor of the assassin route, there's a strong argument for the slopes now. Once the McHugeLarge gear leaves standard, the pendulum will likely swing towards assassins once more, but for now it's a nice instant fix for a small nerf.
2025 In-Standard Synergies
- The olfaction skill (McHugeLarge Slash) has strong synergy with the Chest Mimic (2024). When there's something you want to encounter a bunch of times, one of the best ways to achieve that is to summon the monster up, olfact it, and then enter the zone. Assuming this sniff stacks with olfaction, it'll make this trick a good bit more powerful while you can stack, while also allowing players who don't actually have Transcendent Olfaction to benefit from these skills. (And avatar paths, too! Avatar paths LOVE a good sniff.)
- As previously discussed, the cold resistence is extremely synergistic with the Mmm-brr Mouthwash from the Sept-Ember Censer. Depends on your starting point, but this is going to represent an extra 2-5k stats on turn 0. That's dope!
Overall Rating
We'd rate the McHugeLarge ski set as a tier 1 IOTM. You save a few turns from the +/- combat equips, likely 3-4 turns in routing benefit over the course of a full run from the dramatically increased powerleveling from the cold res, 6 turns from the noncombat forcing mechanism, and 2-3 turns from the sniff. That's a LOT of turns! It's quite strong, and a great IOTM for both low and high shiny players alike. Don't get frozen out -- buy it now!