Peridot of Peril: Overview

2025-05-03 // IOTM Overview

Finding the right monsters got you down? Don't des-pear, the Peridot of Peril is the May 2025 item of the month, and it's incom-pear-able for helping make monsters ap-pear. Pre-pear to be amazed.

General Summary

The Peridot of Peril is an accessory. It features the following simple bluetext enchantments:

+15% Item Drops from Monsters
Regenerate 12-15 HP and MP per adventure
Maximum HP/MP +30

These are neat, but all pale in com-pear-ison to the last enchantment: for your first adventure in each zone per day, you can select exactly which monster you wish to fight in the zone. To restate this: you get one selection per day for every single zone. (Also, the adventure is highlighted in green.)

Also, from your inventory, you can [foresee peril] -- this is not ascension relevant, but it does let you send fruit to your friends, enemies, and neighbors with a perilous gift message.

Speedrun Applicability

OK, starting with the easy stuff: the 15% item drop is nice. The MP restoration is also nice; it essentially ensures that even low shiny users will have whatever MP their combat suite needs through this IOTM alone. Neither will save a turn or two on its own, but it is neat comfort stuff.

Having covered the minor stuff, let's get to the real meat of the matter. It should be quickly ap-pear-ant to the speedster how useful this item will be. Monster selection is one of the most powerful tools in all KoL. As we wrote about in our primer on Faxes and Summons, there are a metric ton of monsters you'll want to encounter in any given run. Being able to encounter them with the lowest possible resource expenditure is how gold stars are won and bronze buttons transform into silver moons. Monster selection is a big freaking deal. And it isn't an overstatement to say that the Peridot of Peril is the most all-encompassing monster selection tool we've ever gotten.

To recap the mechanic: once per day per zone, having the Peridot equipped will trigger a superlikely that lets you pick from the zone's native monsters. This is functionally identical to Map the Monsters, and as such, counts as a fight in the zone. If you have the Peridot equipped and you don't need to pick a monster, you can also exit the superlikely for free.

Easy, right? While the effect is relatively simple, the actual usage of it is not. I want to note that this is absolutely not comprehensive. There are so many things to use this for that I can't really hope to be fully comprehensive here; we just want to demonstrate a few easy places to focus to start getting more value out of your brand new Peridot.

Encountering your Once-Per-Run Monsters

A few different subtypes here. First, there are multiple monsters in run that you should be specifically targeting for yellow rays, either via spitballs or blowing the yellow candle. (Or the Emberiza Aureola familiar ability, if you have neither of those options.) Oftentimes, these monsters are in zones with a lot of monsters in them, or zones where you really don't need to do anything else -other- than the YR. Peridot allows you to cut the crap and just get the monster you need immediately. Examples of these types of Peridot Picks include:

The Knob Goblin harem girl, in Cobb's Knob Harem, for your Goblin King needs.
The Quiet Healer or Burly Sidekick, at the Penultimate Fantasy Airship, for an amulet and a mohawk wig.
The white lion or white snake, at Whitey's Grove, for the components needed for a wet stew.

Second, there are the monsters you need one of per run but often need banishes to find. Examples of these include:

The four tool-bearing gremlins from the war side quest to retrieve Yossarian's tools.
The monstrous boiler in the Haunted Boiler Room, for your wine bomb.
The dairy goat, in the Goatlet, for a goat cheese or two.

Priming Your Copies

Unlike single-shot monster needs like the harem girl or the burly sidekick, some monsters are needed multiple times. In these cases, you'd generally prefer to use a copy source like blowing a purple candle, extruding a Chest Mimic egg, or (more likely, in many of these cases) the Red, White, and Blue Blast (the RWBB) from the Patriotic Eagle. You also can use some sort of sniff -- olfaction, in most paths, or the McHugeLarge Slash from the January IOTM. For these examples, you'll be using your Peridot pick to snag...

Your first writing desk in the Haunted Library. You'll need 4 more, but these are uncopiable, so you probably just use a McHugeLarge Slash or an olfaction.
Your first dirty old lihc in the Defiled Niche. You'll need 12 more, so use as many olfaction-likes as possible. Or, if you're feeling froggy, use a recall habitat or two!
Your first lobsterfrogman from Sonofa Beach. You'll need to use some mimic eggs and purple rays to get the other 4, but at least you get 1 for free and don't need to fax it!
Any of the three topiary animals, in Twin Peak, for access to rusty hedge trimmers. Solid RWBB target.
Your possessed wine rack and Cabinet of Dr. Limpieza, for your unstable fulminate parts. In modern standard, you'll almost certainly need 2 or 3, which makes it a half-decent RWBB target, or a Monkey Point / olfaction target.
Your first pygmy witch surgeon from the Hidden Hospital. You'll likely need 2-3 before you get to the boss, which makes this an excellent RWBB.
Your first racecar bob in the Palindome. You will need 5 dudes; this is a great RWBB, and an OK olfaction.

Delaying your Peridot Pick

Note that in the first section, we called out two areas where you have two monsters you need -- the airship (with the Quiet Healer + Burly Sidekick) and Whitey's Grove (with the white lion + whitesnake). It bears special mention that because you get one per day per zone, in a two-day run, you can get both of these relatively easily by simply doing it once on D1 and once on D2.

In a 1-day run, you can also be one of those smart kinds of people who correctly solves the Monty Hall problem by simply keeping the Peridot out of your accessory slot until you encounter the first one. This way, you don't waste your Peridot pick on a white lion only to get a white lion the next turn -- you can be guaranteed to make the second encounter the one the game is refusing to give you!

A few other instances where you want to use this include:

In the Black Forest -- keep the Peridot off until you encounter either a black adder or a black panther. Then equip your Peridot and encounter the one you missed!
If you aren't using a sneak to skip the delay in the Hidden Apartment Building, save a Peridot for the last turn to ensure you can force a pygmy shaman, if needed, to get your last shot of the curse. Or an accountant, if you're one short.
In the Haunted Bedroom, if you save your pick 6 turns, you can choose your elegant nightstand without having to spend banishes in the delay turns.

All of this is great stuff, and super useful. And this doesn't even cover the most mind-numbing face-stabby speedrun usage of all: exploiting the superlikely to get free chances at other superlikely monsters! Once the delay for the Boss Bat or Copperhead Snakes is burned, you can wear the Peridot to fish for an encounter at no cost. It usually doesn't work, but you might as well! It's free real estate, baby!

2025 In-Standard Synergies

As always, let's go over some IOTMs that make a perfect pear with your Peridot.

As noted, this has monstrously good synergy with the Patriotic Eagle (2023). The eagle has always been a bit underrated, but this really takes it over the top. In addition to the obvious Red, White, and Blue blast note above, Peridot can also be used to find the monster phylum you'd like to do a patriotic screech on; in particular, this allows you to use delay zone Peridot picks to achieve phylum banishes without having to spend extra turns with your Eagle searching for the desired phylum. Which is actually pretty nice!
This has real synergy with the Chest Mimic (2024) along with some minor anti-synergy. On one hand, it's anti-synergistic because something like 15+ desireable Mimic summons in a 2-day run can now be easily snagged with your Peridot. On the other, it's extremely synergistic because it allows you to save on familiar XP for any locally accessible monster in the game, and allows you to get multiple copies out of your Peridot-sought monster. Losing those targets isn't nearly enough to imperil (yuk yuk) your use of good ol' Chesto entirely; I'd be surprised if bleeding edge runs don't still use all 11-22 mimic eggs. It will just save a massive amount of familiar XP per day, allowing you to run much more Peace Turkey, Jill-of-all-Trades, and Patriotic Eagle. (Which is great, given how much this IOTM boosts the eagle!!)
In zones generally lacking in real Peridot targets, you can target a monster's postcombat additives with the Book of Facts (2023). This can be helpful for things like easily snagging pocket wishes, grabbing some extra turns ultrahydrated, or snagging things like disturbing fanfics for extra sleaze damage. The world is your oyster, and the oyster has a Peridot in it!

Overall Rating

We rate the Peridot of Peril a tier 1 IOTM, though it is extremely close to the top tier. It's difficult to isolate all the turn savings this IOTM gives you; it's not quite as flexible as something like the Chest Mimic, which allows you to grab things that are not native to the game's adventuring zones (like your obligatory Mountain Man and your swarms of ghoul whelps), but it also represents (essentially) 30-40 useful in-zone summons every single run. I don't think that every single one of those saves a full turn, but I would venture that there are about 10 that save a full turn, 15 that save a half-turn, and 15 that save less than half a turn. That puts you at about 22 turns saved over a full run. In a 1-day run, this is easily a top-tier T0 IOTM; in a 2-day, it's 11-12 turns a day, which is more along the lines of a tier 1. Still, this is a massive boost to any speed ascender, and well worth your Mr. A. Sound the alarm: this IotM's a real gem!

Article contributed by Captain Scotch & The Erosionseeker