Skeleton of Crimbo Past: Overview
2025-12-09 // IOTM Overview
I was considering only putting the Shrunken Head review up in this post drop, largely due to the fact that the Skeleton of Crimbo Past hasn't been fully spaded. But as I was thinking through it, I decided it's not worth putting it off; I have a little time today, and this is a tiny enough IOTM that the article is going to be a pretty low-effort affair regardless of the spading. So, let's get to it: what's the deal with Frederick Crimbonesby?
General Summary
The Skeleton of Crimbo Past is a familiar. It is a fairy-type familiar, meaning that it increases item drops at a rate of (55*weight)^0.5 + weight - 3%. Extremely simple on the base-familiar-ability side; just a good old classic fairy with the classic equation we all know and love.
The one other thing it does? It drops knucklebones, with a maximum of 100 knucklebones dropped per day. (Drop mechanics will be covered later.) Knucklebones are currency that can be spent by chatting with your skelly. You can buy the following ascension-relevant items, all for 5 knucklebones apiece:
- The Smoking Pope, a potency-2 epic booze, consumable for 10-12 adventures and 50 adventures of a +50% item drops effect
- The prize turkey, a potency-2 epic food, consumable for 10-12 adventures and 50 adventures of a +100% meat drops & +50% combat initiative effect
- The medical gruel, a potency-1 spleen item that gives 100 turns of +5 familiar weight and a bunch of extra HP & HP regen
You can buy one of each of these three items a day.
In addition to these items, there's always a "daily special". These are Crimbo items from past celebrations, available for (often) a huge volume of knucklebones. For instance, on the first day that the skeleton dropped, you could purchase a Tiny Plastic Sword for 2927 knucklebones. That's a lot of bones! Importantly, just because an item is available from the skeleton does not mean the item becomes standard usable again; this isn't particularly relevant for any of the daily specials we've seen so far, but it is mildly important to note since old Crimbo skills are (generally) pretty nice comfort. This feature is just for the collectors.
Speedrun Applicability
This one is pretty simple, all things considered. Since the familiar is just a garden-variety fairy, you only really want to bring this skelly with you if you want to grab a bunch of the food or booze. So the question becomes "do I actually want these items?"
I suspect the answer to this is, mostly, yes. These buffs are decent enough that I'd be surprised if you couldn't find a use for at least one of each; 100% meat drop isn't quite a full turn on nuns given how much meat drop full-shiny users are getting from the Beret, but it is decently solid, and has a chance to save anywhere from a half to a full turn on that. The item drops are also really good; +50% is quite nice, and helpful across multiple parts of your run. Enough so that if you're low shiny, you may want to get a few of them.
Also, helpfully, the adventure yield is quite good. A yield of 5.5 adventures per potency that can be generated in-run without significant tradeoffs is better than most of this year's food and beverage options. To wit, we've had:
- A bunch of 3-3.5 adv size 1 items from the BCZ
- A bunch of 4-4.5 adv size 1 items from the Leprecondo
- One 6 adv size 1 item per run from the Mobius ring (Susie's cupcake)
- Two 6 adv size 1 items from the Allied Radio Backpack (fuel/rations)
- Two pullable 15 adv size 2 items from CyberRealm (the Cybeer/Cyburger)
It's much better than condo & BCZ in terms of turn generation, and while it's slightly worse than the other three notables, you need to trade NC forces from the Allied Radio Backpack for fuel/rations, which is a terrible tradeoff. You can't generate a CyberRealm consumables in-run at all, and you realistically only get one Susie's Cupcake per run.
All this said -- I do think it's worth emphasizing that generating turns for the sake of generating turns isn't always a great call. Turngen is one of those "worth a lot or worth nothing" levers in KOL. If you're at the edge of generating enough turns to cut a day from your run, nearly anything that helps you push to get that last day is worth it. But if you are generating enough turns per day to finish your run in your goal daycount, new turns aren't really doing much for you, and you'd probably be better off using other familiars that give you better turn savings to lower the overall turn count.
Still, these items are clearly going to be among the best ways to fill your gullet if you are simply trying to maximize turns. Not only are these better than your basic replacement-level options, they're also size 2 -- this is nice, since it lowers the number of items you have to generate to fill your organs.
Maximizing Your Knucklebones
Having discussed why you may want to get a few of the consumables, let's take a step back and talk through knucklebone acquisition. Assuming you've acquired the SLEEP(5) ROM Chip from CyberRealm, you will have 5 free rests per day available. Once you have one of these skellies, your first 5 rests at your campsite per day will give you one knucklebone. This effectively means that one consumable is "free" and can be achieved without actually using the familiar at all. Sick! Cincho owners can make free rests into NC forcers right now, so we're switching from free rests giving 4-6 sneaks in this year's meta into giving a single decent consumable in next year's meta. That's basically the same exact thing! (NOTE: This is a bit.)
To get more than one, you'll need to actually bring your skeleton with you. Many recent IOTMs with droppable currency (like the Peace Turkey or the Mini Kiwi) are tied to an innate drop rate that is the same throughout the day. The Skeleton is a bit different -- the rates of dropping a knucklebone appear to be somewhat phylum-based, with one exception. While not a phylum, the game does internally differentiate skeletons for the purposes of the several "+X damage against skeletons" modifier groups.
So it's natural that you will (nearly) always get a knucklebone when facing a skeleton in combat; 90% of the time, fighting a skeleton monster with your Skeleton of Crimbo Past equipped will give you a knucklebone. Beyond that firm rule, based on our initial week of spading, here are the phylums to target along with a rough rate of acquisition. Ordering from best to worst:
- 70% for PIRATES and ORCS; some very bony lads and lasses here.
- 50% for DUDES, HOBOS, and ELVES
- 40% for GOBLINS, HUMANOIDS, and DEMONS
- 30% for BEASTS and UNDEAD
- 20% for PENGUINS, FISH, and WEIRDS
- 10% for CONSTRUCTS and BUGS
- No chance at all from SLIMES, PLANTS, MER-KINS, HORRORS, HIPPIES, ELEMENTALS, and CONSTELLATIONS
Atop these rates, you can add an additional 10% chance of a post-combat knucklebone by equipping the skeleton with his familiar-specific equipment; notably, this is not multiplicative, and will give you a 10% chance of a knucklebone from the seven phylums that don't naturally drop knucklebones.
So! How many can you actually expect to get? More than enough! You only need an extra 5 to get your 2nd consumable of the day, and you have a lot of varying options with which to get those 5. By dint of the highly skewed distribution, you would very much prefer to use your skeleton on fights with aligned phyla. If you're going to try and only use your skeleton on fights where there's a decent chance of a knucklebone drop, those fights will primarily consist of:
- Fights in the Defiled Nook (7-9 per run; 7.2 knucks expected)
- Fights in the Smut Orc Logging Camp (3-6 per run; 3.2 knucks expected)
- Fights against notable pygmies in the Hidden City (10 per run; 5 knucks expected)
- Fights against the dudes in Copperhead Club and the Red Zeppelin (5-7 per run; 3 knucks expected)
- Fights against Bob Racecar in the palindome (5 per run; 2.5 knucks expected)
- Fights against the dudes in the airship (0-5 per run; 1.5 knucks expected)
Again -- because you only actually want five extra knucklebones, you should be able to get all the knucks you need from the Nook and the Orc Camp. But if, for some reason, you want to get more knucklebones in run... these are roughly the zones you'd want to be running your skeleton at.
2025 In-Standard Synergies
- There's some synergy with this year's toy cupid's bow; the familiar equipment is meaningful if you run out of skeletons on D1, likely shaving off a familiar turn or two. Not a massive boon, but good enough.
Overall Rating
The Skeleton of Crimbo Past is a tier 5 IOTM. Per my fun-for-the-whole-family tiering explanations, that's reserved for IOTMs that save 0-2 turns per day. I think that's a pretty reasonable number to attribute to this little guy. The buffs from the food and booze are meaningful enough that it probably adds up to a very tiny handful of turns in a 2-day run. The turngen boost is substantial enough over the next-best options that it may well be a relatively important piece of a 1-day meta in the next few years. A pretty tiny little guy all things considered, but as the proud father of a 12-foot-skeleton (Jalen, pictured below in a snow-yarmulke), I am a biased man: skeletons are awesome and this little guy is a little cutie too.
