April Shower Thoughts shield: Overview

2025-04-17 // IOTM Overview

This month's IOTM was an interesting spading exercise for the Ascension Speed Society discord. Due to the nature of the shield, people were taking a fresh look at core game class skills, and trying to find all the little boosts the shield would bring. Thanks to the excellent work by our lovely spaders, I'd say the shield was (effectively) fully spaded by the 3rd day it existed. Some of my friends were a tiny bit disappointed; I think they were hoping for a little bit more to find. Personally? I don't know what else we were expecting. After all... it's a shower, not a grower.

General Summary

The April Shower Thoughts shield is, shockingly, a shield. Even moreso than most of our IOTM stat sticks where the true value is in the special features, it is a startlingly bare item when you look at the base enchantments. To wit, those base enchants are:

All Attributes +10
Maximum HP/MP +25
Improves some of your class skills!

It's essentially a Mr. Accessory in your offhand with a bit of HP and MP on it. But wait! What's this -- a new blue text enchantment? You bet it is! The shield improves the casting effects of eighteen core class skills -- three for each of the core six classes. Due to quite a wide variety of effects, I'll break them down in more detail in our next section.

In addition to these skill benefits, there is a [shower] link that gives you 3 globs of wet paper a day for the first two days of your ascension, and a randomized 1-4 globs each day thereafter. You can spend these globs through the [think] link besides your globs. For the purposes of speedruns, the only affordable items are:

spitball (1 glob) -- combat item; when used, serves as a free kill yellow ray that gives 100 turns of ELY
papier Mach 1 airplane (2 globs) -- combat item; when used, gives 25 turns of an effect that stuns monsters in the zone it was used in for the first round of combat
Three Sheets to the Wind (3 globs) -- booze; 1 drunkenness, 4 adventures. Also grants 1 turn of the effect "wetted whistle", which gives you 10 extra rollover adventures
pile of wet dates (3 globs) -- food; 1 fullness, 4 adventures. Also grants 1 turn of the effect "A Date With Tomorrow", which gives you 10 extra rollover adventures
"wet workouts" (2 globs) -- potions; each of the three Wet Workout items can be consumed for 20 adventures of an effect with +15 and +20% experience gains to the three respective core stats
wet shower radio (1 glob) -- melting accessory; +25% item drops from monsters, nothing else

Having covered the very basics, let's expand on the item's power.

Speedrun Applicability

With 18 skills improved, we are going to cover the buffs and combat skills separately, before going over the rest of the shield's remaining benefits.

April Shower Thoughts: Buffs

In rough order of value, you can get the following unique buffs out of the shield by casting the associated skills with the shield equipped:

You gain Lubricating Sauce (+15% item drops) with each cast of Sauce Contemplation (1MP)
You gain Tubes of Universal Meat (+30% meat drop) with each cast of Manicotti Meditation (1MP)
You gain Slippery as a Seal (+50% init) with each cast of Seal Clubbing Frenzy (1MP)
You gain Thoughtful Empathy (+8 familiar weight) with each cast of Empathy (15MP)
You get one cast of Simmer (a skill that normally costs 1 adventure) for free, giving you +100% spell damage for 10 turns
You gain Strength of the Tortoise (+10-20 MP Regen) with each cast of Patience of the Tortoise (1MP)
You gain Disco over Matter (+20-30 HP Regen) with each cast of Disco Aerobics (1MP)
You gain Mariachi Moisture (+10% crit chance) with each cast of Moxie of the Mariachi (1MP)

The big star-eyes buff, in unrestricted, is the extra +8 familiar weight; assuming you have a Bandersnatch or Stomping Boots, this is an extra 1.6 freeruns. That's dope! Beyond that, having an extra +15% item drop that you can run over your entire run is worth a bit, even if it isn't groundbreaking stuff. Same with 30% meat that can be used for nuns, 8bit, and the tower; it isn't going to be worth a full turn but it's nice. Spell damage from Simmer will be helpful for some players trying to get bridge parts for the smut orc quest, while the MP/HP regen is just an incredibly comfortable gain that should help runners avoid caring about regen for the entirety of their run.

For the most part, these are just very comfy skills. In addition, each of the 1MP skills gives you +10 flat stats to one of your mus/mys/mox, which equates to +20 to all stats when you have all 6 running. This too is a comfortable add. My guess is that if you added up the fractional help you get from having all of this crap running for your whole run, it probably equates to 1-ish turn of ascension assistance. Nothing wild, but pretty neat!

April Shower Thoughts: Combat Skills

In rough order of value, here are the combat skills that are improved when you cast them with the shield equipped:

Your first cast of Northern Explosion each day becomes an instant-kill that forces all drops -- essentially a yellow ray that doesn't give any turns of ELY, making it similar to something like Spooky Jelly or Feel Envy. (Important note: while this is an instant-kill, it is not a freekill!)
Your first cast of Shieldbutt (and every five casts thereafter) gives you 5 turns of a random effect (a la the hookah or crazy horse)
Each cast of Lasagna Bandages does 100% more healing (both in and out of combat)
Your first cast of Lunging Thrust-Smack each combat also staggers your foe
Each cast of Wave of Sauce does 150% more deleveling
Your once-per-accordion-wearing-combat Accordion Bash stuns for two extra rounds

Obviously, the big value here is Northern Explosion -- the ability to force drops while your eyes look yellow helps ensure that you don't have to wait around to use your yellow rays. It also just means you can force one more combat of drops, which is inherently powerful (... though less so the closer you get to capping every necessary drop in a run). Even if you can't think of a great place for it, there's always shadow slabs -- the native drop dampening of the shadow rifts makes things like this specifically quite enticing.

The rest of the skills are neat, but not really necessary for most speedsters. There's some small iota of possible value localized in the shieldbutt boost; you can cast shieldbutt a ton of times in the Shadow Rifts, so you may as well do that before you buff up for something important and see if you luck into, say, a 5-turn +100% meat buff or Dirty Pear or a big +item% buff or something like that. I like lasagna bandages as a "break in case of emergency" combat skill, so I find the double healing a pretty nice little benefit.

Beyond that... the delevel/stagger/stuns are cute, but won't be particularly relevant until we're in a no-censer meta, where they will help oust your glitch monster in softcore runs that pull it. If we get any other tough combats, they'll be neat, but most tough combats are localized to avatar paths that won't have access to any of these skills anyway, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

April Shower Thoughts: Miscellaneous

We'll start with the last 4 skill enhancements, all of which are minor.

Both of the pickpocket upgrade skills (Sensitive Fingers and Sticky Fingers) are improved, with an extra 30% meat and an extra pull chance for your pickpockets. This only -really- helps moxie classes, since they can pickpocket every combat in the run, but it's marginally nice for the pickpocket-obsessives among us.
Your first five uses of Disco Nap give 20 MP back as well as its customary 20 HP. Since Disco Nap costs 8 MP, this means you get a refund of 12 MP, for 60 free MP per day. Not particularly useful, but kind of cool for casting buffs at turn 0, I guess.
Leash of Linguini gives +5 adventures for each cast. So, you can save a bit of MP on your leash casts. Cool, cool.

Having covered all of the skill boosts, let's go through the last big daily flag: the globs of wet paper. In most standard paths, the obvious choice are the spitballs -- while it is a higher ELY duration (100 turns) than your Roman Candelabra (75 turns), it also turns the fight free. That's dope! You can expect to use 2-3 on D1 and 2-3 on D2; you'll be doing YRs at turn 0, turn 100, and turn 200 (if you play 200 full turns on D1) and then 200, 300, and 400 on D2. This leaves you with one wad left on one of your days.

Due to the decision space being so limited, you probably will spend that last wad on a wet shower radio, the melting +25% item drop accessory, and try to do all of your big item drop tasks (Spookyraven basement, the nook, 8-bit, A-Boo clues, hedge trimmers, etc.) on that day.

While I normally try to exclusively discuss standard, it is worth noting that in unrestricted paths, those who have the Jurassic Parka likely will not get spitballs, as they are totally equivalent to spitting Jurassic Acid. You also probably won't want to pull spitballs in Z for Zootomist (where you have a 30 turn freekill YR) or Avatar of Shadows Over Loathing (where you have a 50 turn freekill YR). In cases like that, it's difficult to come up with any particularly powerful uses for your globs. The %stat stuff will be mildly helpful for leveling quicker in unrestricted or AoSOL, I suppose, but that really doesn't save you anything; unrestricted paths are blessed with insanely fast leveling without really trying, I struggle to see how +20% experience gains actually empowers you in any real way. (And in Zootomist, it literally does nothing.) The +25% item drop accessory is decent enough, but nothing else is going to move the needle.

2025 In-Standard Synergies

It bears special mention that this is perhaps the first time ever we have had an IOTM that is virtually useless in the IOTM's active challenge path. It's fair to say that this IOTM does effectively nothing in Z for Zootomist. The path has a superior YR, so the spitballs are pretty bad. It also has no class skills, so all the cool skill enhancements are totally out of the question. It doesn't even have stats, so the %stat stuff is completely useless. In Zoot-world, it's literally just a shield for +10 attributes and +25 HP/MP, alongside a melting +25% item accessory. Hilarious.
The non-ELY yellow ray attached to Northern Explosion is kind of nice when used in concert with the shadow rifts accessible via the closed-circuit telephone (2023). There's a massive penalty to your item drop bonus within the rifts, so much so that you essentially can't guarantee shadow bricks unless you're pickpocketing them. Assuming you encounter 4 shadow slabs in your 11 shadow rift turns, you can get +1 shadow brick from this method, which is effectively +1 freekill in 2025 standard.

Overall Rating

We rate the April Shower Thoughts shield a tier 3 IOTM. At the floor, in a path without Jurassic Parka or a better avatar-specific YR, it saves 3 turns per day through appending freekills to your YRs. The buffs save about a turn over your whole run, and your daily Northern Explosion drop-forcer is currently worth about 1 turn per day due to shadow bricks, and 0.5 to 0.7 outside of that. It adds up to right around 4 turns, but with some mild downward skew due to its lower value in avatar paths, unrestricted paths, and its dependence on specific skills that a low-shiny user may not have permed.

That said? It's very comfy! To someone with very few IOTMs, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this as a first IOTM, but I do think it's enough of a Swiss army knife that it should be in your first few. It is going to broadly help simplify combat, give you a few new powers, and get a taste of a few different IOTM mechanics at a pretty low cost. Also, it turns the 1 MP buffs into an always-on booster, and gives you 15-16 skills that are early must-perms. Not bad for a bunch of gross paper that got stuck together in the shower!

Article contributed by Captain Scotch