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The Eternity Codpiece: Overview

2026-01-07 // IOTM Overview

Got a real bone to pick with this year's item-of-the-year. First of all, it's advertised as the "Eternity" codpiece. Well, guess what, folks: someday, our world's sun is going to die, and when that happens these "Eternity" codpieces will stop existing! What the heck??? And all this about codpieces... look, I don't want to come across as ungrateful, but I don't see ANY pieces of cod in the art for this IOTY! WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO TRUTH IN ADVERTISING?!?

Alright. My boomer moment has passed. Let's discuss the Eternity Codpiece!

General Summary

The Eternity Codpiece is an accessory. Straight out of the box, it has two bluetext enchantment:

  • All Attributes +5
  • Holds Gems

Obviously, the key to this IOTY is in the second enchantment. In your inventory, the codpiece has a [decorate] link. Clicking this takes you to a screen similar to that of November 2017's IOTM, the portable pantogram. You go to a screen with five gem settings that can be filled with items, which give a wide variety of enchantments. Prior to ascending, you fill the codpiece with gems; the gems persist in the codpiece upon ascension.

Different gems have different associated enchantments; the wiki page for the decoration choice features a comprehensive list of the enchantments. There are two important notes on the gem installation process here:

  • You can take gems out at any time, and re-install them at any time
  • When installed, you can access the skills of IOTM gems installed in the codpiece (currently, Peridot of Peril and Blood Cubic Zirconia), but will only get a specific/special "codpiece" enchantment rather than the IOTM's core enchantments on your codpiece (for instance, +20 HP/MP for Peridot, rather than the +15% item drop)

Speedrun Applicability

In a vacuum, the Codpiece is pretty simple. Put gems in, get a cool enchantment, use it. But there are three good ways to use the Codpiece, and all will hold value in different situations.

Option #1: Make a Good Accessory

The first (and most obvious) way is to put in gems prior to your run that make for a cracked accessory that's generically quite powerful. Because most gems can just be repeated, you can make accessories that are 5x the strength of whatever good base modifiers exist. There are quite a few nice ones, too!

  • 5x MASSIVE GEMSTONES give +50% ITEM DROP. This is self-evidently really good, and ties with the once-per-run barrel ring from 2015's Shrine to the Barrel God. The current best-in-slot item drop gear is the +25% radio from the April Shower Thoughts Calendar, and that one requires giving up a freekill YR.
  • 5x GLACIAL SAPPHIRES give +10 COLD RESISTANCE. Only really relevant for folks with the Sept-Ember Censer... but for folks with the censer, it's REALLY relevant. It is worth noting that this is only +5 resistance over what you'd get for taking a bembershoot. But, somewhat helpfully, saving that one ember on D1 does let you do two embers on D2, which synergizes well with the Blood Cubic Zirconia for generating more stats to do weird spinal tap stuff with.
  • 5x TUESDAY'S RUBIES give +25 MONSTER LEVEL. This isn't a -ton- of ML, but every bit helps, and it's certainly better than any other ML accessory we happen to have accessible in-run. (Also, helpfully, you can encounter these in-run if you get your drum machine via a refracted yellow ray in the Oasis.)
  • 5x AZURITES give +50 SLEAZE DAMAGE. There's actually a slightly better sleaze damage option available to intrepid speedrunners, which I'll cover later, but azurites are simple and incredibly cheap.
  • 5x BIG BUMBOOZER MARBLES give +55% COMBAT INITIATIVE. There are a good portion of places in the run where you actually really need init. 55% is a decent amount; I probably wouldn't pick this in most cases, but it is an option.
  • 5x PRICELESS DIAMONDS give +50 DAMAGE ABSORPTION. In a normal standard run where your skills are accessible, I don't think you'd ever really need this. But if you are in an avatar path and having trouble hitting the Damage Absorption test in the 8-bit realm, this is an easy way to solve that; +50 in a non-pants/hat slot is a pretty nice boost. (Helpfully, even if you don't pull 5 of them to start, you can find a few during your Copperhead Club adventures as well.)
  • 5x UNBLEMISHED PEARLS give +5 ADVENTURES PER DAY. Honestly, mostly just including it here because this is comically good for 11,037 Leagues Under the Sea unrestricted runs, enough so that I have to assume TPTB are going to patch it. Not great for standard, though it's clearly decent turnbloat if your runs take 5-6 days to complete.
  • 5x INCREDIBLY DENSE MEAT GEMS give +150% MEAT DROP. Look. It's certainly a larger boost than the rest of these options, and it feels a bit bananas to have a 150% meat drop accessory. But it's really, really, really not necessary. I might be biased simply because I have no intention whatsoever of buying or borrowing any IDMGs for these purposes, but I think this is a poor use of the resource. The item drop boost is functionally a lot better for you, allowing you to cap many more things across your whole run, and in some cases potentially even removing the pressure of spending certain other resources for item drop percent, like the Allied Radio +items buff or a clover/turn for One Very Clear Eye.
  • 5x GIANT PEARLS give +5 POOL SKILL. In standard, you don't need this. In (most) avatar paths, you don't need this. But in avatar paths or teetotaler runs where you can't get >5 pool skill from drunkenness? This is awesome. Finding the Billiards NC takes (on average) about 2.5 turns, and without proper pool skill, your expectation would be 2-3 NCs needed to actually get through Billiards and open the Library -- which would take 5-8 turns overall, with a really long tail. There are absolutely paths where optimal usage of the Codpiece is stacking some pool skill on it. Incredibly rare enchantment.

One important note -- you can mix and match a bit. For instance, the reward item from this year's crimbo, the glimmering golden crystal, gives +1 familiar experience per combat. You can only get one per account, but even a +1 familiar experience gem slotted in will be somewhat valuable with the number of turns we're running the Chest Mimic & the Cooler Yeti. You probably need to do a bit of math, but there's a decent case for doing 4x gems for one enchant and 1x gem for familiar XP. Or, you know. The other way...

Option #2: Become a Smuggler!

The second (and perhaps less obvious) way is to use the Codpiece to smuggle helpful ascension items into your run. This is one of the big reasons the codpiece is such an interesting item -- if used this way, it essentially gives you five extra pulls, limited to a tiny group of strange items. To that end -- there aren't a -massive- number of ascension helpers available for this kind of smuggling, but there certainly aren't zero. In my view, these are the biggest helpers you can smuggle into with your codpiece.

  • Smuggling the STEELY MARBLE gives you an offhand with +65 sleaze damage for the purposes of the Zeppelin Mob. That's really good! It's likely enough to save having to beret for a +100 effect, though I suspect most speedrunners still will want to beret for Dirty Pear.
  • Smuggling the GIANT PEARL gives you a monstrous amount of meat to start a run; the pearl is a 12,000 meat autosell item. This makes non-degrassi signs a lot more comfortable, completely covering your early purchases of a desert bus pass and the forged identification documents (5000 apiece, or 4750 if you have Five Finger Discount). If you pull five for some reason, that's 60,000 meat. What?!?
  • Smuggling the TAWDRY AMETHYST has two nice boosts. First, it gives the codpiece sleaze resistance, which is great for the Blech House Moxie/Sleaze test for extra bridge parts. Second, when you're done with that, it can be crafted via Really Expensive Jewelrycrafting into the Mudflap-Girl Necklace (+40 sleaze spell damage) or the Mudflap-Girl Ring (+40 sleaze damage). If you smuggle two, you can make both of them for +80 sleaze damage in two accessory slots. This slightly worse than just getting 2-3 mini kiwi bikinis, but might be a useful trick for the 2027 meta once the mini kiwi has passed us by.
  • Smuggling the CRYSTALLIZED PUMPKIN SPICE from September 1st to November 30th gives you a potion for 50 turns of +200% all-stats, +50% init, +25% item drops, and +5 familiar weight -- on top of an enchantment in the codpiece of +20% food drops, which is useful enough for the surprisingly large amount of food we want to get in each run.
  • Smuggling the PRICELESS DIAMOND gives you the DA bonus discussed above, but it also gives you an essentially free Red Zeppelin ticket, saving you 5000 meat. Is this worse than giant pearls? Yeah, but it is a nice little side hustle for avatar paths where you may want the DA for 8-bit.

Option #3: Make a Good Accessory AND Smuggle Some Goodies!

As the title suggests, the final and perhaps most pertinent recommendation is to simply combine the best of both worlds.

Making the Codpiece into a high item drop accessory that comes attached with other goodies is -- in my view -- the optimal way to use it, at least for now. Yes, there's some real attraction to having an unbeatably large +50% item drop accessory. But +30% item drop is still the best item drop accessory you're going to have access to in-run, and that gives you two slots to bring along extra goodies with!

  • In my view, one STEELY MARBLE is a must -- +65 sleaze damage will almost surely save you a beret busk or other resources on the Zeppelin quest, saving (potentially) both a turn via 1 less NC and a clover that can be used for Smut Orc bridge parts or other fun tools.
  • The next slot is a bit more interesting. I could see an argument for bringing a GIANT PEARL and starting your run with a ton of meat; this will make your run a heck of a lot more comfy, and you can just slot your BCZ into the codpiece after you've unceremoniously sold your pearl.
  • Then again... the GLIMMERING GOLDEN CRYSTAL giving you +1 familiar experience to your accessory slot is actually pretty rad. Should amount to at least 150-200 familiar XP on familiars that really need the experience, which is anywhere from 15-20 familiar turns that can be spent on basically anything else.

The opportunities are endless! ... OK, well, there aren't -that- many. But a 30% item drop accessory that can shove a good deal of extra XP on fams that need it is nice. And the accessory slot is a very contested slot in standard; smuggling in an item that isn't going to last in your codpiece isn't necessarily a bad thing, since there will be multiple points in your run where you want Peridot and BCZ equipped alongside other useful items. There's always option value in the banana stand, as people might say. (Very confusingly, to be honest, that's not a great sentence.)

2024 In-Standard Synergies

  • As noted, there is explicit and direct synergy with the Blood Cubic Zirconia (2025) and the Peridot of Peril (2025). The IOTM is essentially built to combine those two IOTMs into one slot on your belt. (Notably, there's possible future synergy here as well -- if more IOTM gems come out throughout the year, this could potentially be a lifesaver when it comes to managing equipment pressure.)
  • As also noted, there is less explicit but direct synergy with the Sept-Ember Censer (2024) in the codpiece's ability to stack a bunch of extra cold resistance beyond what you can naturally achieve.

Overall Rating

We'd rate the Eternity Codpiece a tier 4 IOTM. This isn't a massively important item in this year's standard, but it is an extremely comfortable item with a few nice little tricks. The simplistic "slot in a bunch of item drop, ascend, profit" method of using it probably saves you a turn or two over a run. While that gets a bit more fractional as you lower the item drop percentage, it's still additive item drop compared to what you'd be getting naturally, and pulling a steely marble for +65 sleaze damage is likely to save you a turn, either through fewer resources spent on sleaze damage (that can then be spent on item and meat drop) or just getting you over that next threshold to cut your Zeppelin noncombats. It's solid! And it has the potential for future empowerment; if TPTB drop more gem IOTMs over the next few years, this thing could end up being essential to running all of your gem IOTMs at once. Overall? Very fun, and reasonably high quality on the scale of normal IOTYs.

One quick additional note. There is a possibility of new gems that aren't IOTMs; in particular, there was scuttlebutt from a few /dev folks about Heart of the Volcano being one that was obviously missed and will definitely be added in. This post will be updated in the event that those drop before the end of January.

Article contributed by Captain Scotch