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The adventures of Rusa in Toontown (the eleventh instalment)

Toon-Up, level-up

So, remember how I unloct Toon-Up in the second instalment (specifically the “Courier career” section)? That made it my first gag track that I ever unlocked (making it my third gag track in total) — & yet here we are, maxing it dead last…:

Well, finally!! Now all my gags are maxed frfr. Phewf.

I have continued to V.P. it up & thus level up my SBHQ suit:

It’s really messing with my body image.

Oh, & my mother frocking Safe is merry frothing organic now‽:

70 + 11 = HUGE!!!

CLONK!!

I think I made it reasonably clear in the “Nose to grindstone” section of the previous instalment why I’m so excited about organic Safe in particular. I make a big deal out of it because people tend not to understand the ways of gag economy, presumably because that would require some kind of actual strategising — & even coöperation! But really, it’s usually less scary than I make it sound, & the problem lies more with TTR convincing people not to take their own gags seriously^[1].

So let’s see some actual combos? Hello?^[2]

Cog level	Lure?	combo	commentary
7		1 org Safe	⭐ Super duh.
9		1 Hose + 1 org Safe	Org Fruit works too. Only marginally useful, because a Cream can be used when the Safe isn’t org, but saves a Cream either way.
10	🧲	1 Door + 1 org Weight	Saves a Safe. Surprisingly handy.
10		2 Trunks + 1 org Safe	Kind of a weird one, but its niche uses are useful even in a group of four Toons with maxed Sound.
11	🧲	1 Door + 1 org Safe	⭐ Amazing combo. Incredibly underrated.
11		3 Trunks + 1 org Safe	Similar comments to the 2-Trunk version apply.
11		1 Storm + 1 org Safe	More of a Lureless combo, but still worth noting.
12	🧲	1 Storm + 1 org Safe	⭐ Traditionally this combo is just 2 Storms. This saves an entire level 6 gag, which is huge. Very useful, vastly underrated.
12		2 Fogs + 1 org Safe	⭐ Even many Sound-wielding Toons will be familiar with this combo, as it allows for the conservation of 1 precious Fog. However, in the usual version, a Storm (or rather, two Storms, one for each level 12 Cog) is used. This version goes even further by also conserving a Storm or two!
12		2 Fogs + 1 Trunk + 1 org Weight	Surprisingly common combo, but the org Drop version really just saves a Safe. 🤷🏽‍♀️
12		1 org Piano	⭐ This combo may appear questionable on account of the not-so-great chance of the Piano hitting an unstunned level 12. However, using Pianos to take out 12s is common practice, & if the stun gag(s) miss, org Drop means that there’s still a chance of success! Moreover, when stunning with Sound, this allows stunning with just 1 weak Sound, rather than multiple Sound gags or 1 almighty Fog. Also allows stunning with 1 Bottle.
13		1 Hose + 1 org Piano	⭐ Without org Drop, this combo requires an additional gag, or else the use of a level 6 gag (presumably Storm)!
14	🧲	1 Cream + 1 org Piano	⭐ Makes more sense when the Cog is already lured, because otherwise you could “just” use a Door (making the organicity of the Piano irrelevant). Then again, Trapless Toons are very common, & so are lured Cogs!
14		1 Hose + 1 Bottle + 1 org Piano	The unlured version of the above. Without org Drop, 2 Creams (or 1 Cream + 1 Fruit, where one or both are org) may be used. However, the superiority of Squirt over Throw in terms of accuracy is very significant here, & 2 Creams is a bit pricey anyway.

And who knows? Maybe we’ll see even more org Drop combos in the future…! 😉^[2]

Footnotes for “Toon-Up, level-up”

1. [↑] Hanlon’s razor applies.
2. [↑] This table only includes combos that involve exactly one org gag and involve exactly one Drop gag, both of which are the same gag. We could go on (even removing other assumptions as well), but I’m bored — & if you’re reading this, you probably are too by now.

Golfing pirates who live in castles riding the trolley

But that’s enough Vry Srs Bsns™ for right now. I was invited to play a few short holes by Sheriff Rainbow Hulabouncer & Rosie Razzleroni at Chip ’n’ Dale’s MiniGolf!

That’s right… in addition to having a racing minigame that can be played for fun & profit (read: maxlaff), there’s also putt-putt golf. Miniature golf. Crazy golf. Garden golf. Tom Thumb golf, if you will.

We entered Hole-some Fun, the course with 6 holes; this is the middling course, as Walk in the Par has 3 holes, & The Hole Kit and Caboodle has 9.

If you’re already experienced in the ways of Tewtow, then you might notice something about these numbers. These minigolf courses correspond to Cog (viz. Bossbot) Golf Courses (CGCs): the Front Three has 3 floors (rather than holes), the Middle Six has 6, & the Back Nine has 9. This positions minigolf as the “Toon equivalent” of the “real” golf played by Bossbots (the cartoon robot analogues of executives) on large golf courses. Although the basic parallelism still stands, the numeric parallel was destroyed by the recent UNM update.

In any case, you can perhaps imagine what minigolf consists of.

Most of the courses are pretty basic like the one that you see above. Not pictured is the fact that the blue block obstacle actually moves back & forth.

Transcription of the above image

27%

Press left arrow or right arrow to aim.
Press and hold control to swing.

Because the meter (representing how hard the ball is to be struck) displays the percentage (27%, in this example), there are — if I recall correctly — golfing guides out there that will tell you how to get hole-in-ones & such, simply by indicating percentages & directions to aim. The latter is presumably the hard part, but your aim does at least start out deterministically, & I think you can press Shift ⇧(?) to automatically aim at the hole (although this is only sometimes useful).

Because there’s only ever one golfer at any given time, everyone else’s faces are available on the screen so that their chat bubbles have somewhere to go. Unfortunately, the whole thing where you have to take turns can make minigolf a bit of a protracted pain in the bum.

When you do complete a hole by actually getting your ball in there (as opposed to running out of attempts & getting an automatic triple-bogey or whatever), you get this goofy little show-off animation:

I’m not a huge fan of minigolf — although I do tend to tolerate it better than racing, so it has that going for it. But I’ve certainly never maxed out either of them! That’s bad news for my maxlaff, but oh well. I only play videogames if they’re fun, sorry. So, you know, I don’t really expect to be any good at golf/racing, & honestly I can’t even remember the last time that I did even a little putt-putt. I made as much clear up front, because I was a little afraid of embarrassing myself. And then I somehow, by sheer fortune, managed to do quite well anyway…

Transcription of the above image

HOLE IN ONE

---

Rosie Razzleroni: who are u

Rusa: LMHO

A hole-in-one?? Sheesh. Now I’m embarrassed for a completely different reason…

Dressup

After the minigolfing, we decided to check out each other’s houses. I was particularly impressed by the exterior of Rosie’s house, which was a giant castle with three flags at its spires:

Wow. A whole lot fancier than my house…

Now, I’ll tell you right now, I’m certainly no mediævalist. So I can’t attest to the accuracy or inaccuracy of this depiction of castles. But I did find this rather useful footnote on the relevant Wikipedia article (which has certainly been touched by mediævalists) that contrasts castles with other, usually later, styles of “big homes where rich Europeans live”:

A pleasance is a style of walled-in royal or noble residence, used by some nobility in the late medieval period. In particular, a pleasance necessarily had extensive, elaborate gardens; these are sometimes called by the modern descriptive phrase “stately pleasure gardens”. They were built in northern Europe after gunpowder and cannon had obsoleted the early medieval military castles. In general, a pleasance was intentionally built to resemble a militarily-functional castle, so that it could serve as what one could call “landscape propaganda” — a reminder to those viewing it from the outside of the superior power and status of the resident nobility which had been dispatched from castle garrisons in the prior generation(s). And a pleasance was built to resemble those remembered castles, even though to reduce expense, the walls were not adequate as fortifications, as-built[.]

By the 14^th c., gunpowder had been introduced to Europe. Another century later, & the military use of gunpowder had advanced far enough to make the castles of previous generations no longer militarily viable fortifications. So castles after this point were basically just cosplaying as castles. And who can blame them? Castles do look pretty cool.

Speaking of cosplaying, that’s exactly what we decided to do. Dressing up as pirates was not my idea, as evidenced by the fact that I had almost no pirate-related cosmetics to wear. I did, however, try my best to match their pirate vibes, & we hopped on the DDL Trolley, like any good pirates would:

Believe it or not, the Trolley games change significantly depending on which Trolley you ride. It’s expected that, as you progress through the main ToonTaskline from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, you’ll get better at Trolley games. This makes TTC the “easy mode” Trolley, DDL the “hard mode”, & every other Trolley somewhere in between.

We were challenged indeed by our first game, a round of DDL’s Ring Game as a party of four!:

DDL’s Ring Game is difficult enough, but the need to move past your teammates to get to your ring makes it multiply more so. The game represents a group success (meaning that everyone passed through their respective rings) as a green “O” (which I’ll represent as “◎”), an individual success (meaning that I got my ring, but at least one other player didn’t get theirs) as a yellow “O”, & an individual failure (meaning that I missed my ring) as a red “X”. So the string “OOO◎◎OOOXX◎◎OO◎X” in the above image means that out of 16 distinct attempts, I personally succeeded on 13 (= 81.25%) of them, but only 5 (= 31.25%) were group successes.

Still challenging was a three-player round of Catching Game:

The basic challenge here is that some of the shadows on the ground are those of delicious falling pineapples, whereas others are less delicious falling anvils. It’s often difficult to tell which is which before it’s too late!

We also did Toon Escape, where I deployed my widely-feared strategy of “just run to the end as fast as you can & ignore all the treasures along the way”…:

Transcription of the above image

Toon	points
Sheriff Rainbow Hulabouncer	25
Rosie Razzleroni	64
Rusa	124

😤

And finally, we also did Photo Fun. Or should I say, Photo “““Fun”””. I mean, no offence if you like this game, but I think that this is the one game that I consistently see people moan about. I even recall a (formerly?) popular strategy of everyone agreeing to immediately use up all their film by spamming random photos, just so that the game would end earlier.

The rules of how photographs are scored is very unclear, but basically you look around the scene for opportunities to take photos similar to the ones given as fixed examples, & you get scored based on how good the photos are. That’s all I know… 🤷🏽‍♀️

Steel yourself

Mmmkay. Let’s get baq 2 it. Now that my SBHQ suit is getting up to levels of some significance, my Merit requirements are accordingly larger. To ✨⁠ascend⁠✨ to the rank of Two-Face, I decided to try… my very first Steel Factory! Whoa! Spoopy! Scawwie!!

This was my introduction to Steel: a Mingler, a Cold Caller, & a Mr. Hollywood. Granted, a Cold Caller is a pretty ordinary thing to see in a Factory’s first fight, but this one was even level 8!!

Huh?? I thought that Cog levels only went up to a maximum of their tier plus four (1 + 4 = 5, in this case)…? Well, it’s technically not new to TTR, but it’s new to Cog Headquarters, & certainly new to you if you’re used to TTO rules. Then again, there aren’t any level indicators in the above image, so maybe you don’t believe me. Here’s a screenshot of a Name Dropper from later in the same run:

Oh jeez, oh sheesh, oh gosh. Not a level ten Name Dropper!!

Naturally, in the second fight of the run, our Lure missed, & one of the Skelecogs gave reproof:

Unfortunately for us, however, this would not be the last Mingler in this Steel run to attack us after our Lure had the good fortune to completely miss:

Oh yes, that is a big ouchie. This Mingler was “overlevelled” (if you will) at level 12, so its deadly Paradigm Shift attack became even deadlier, at a whopping −27 laff to each Toon victim! 😵

Naturally, at this point we were a bit exasperated with the state of our Lure, so we made really, really damn sure that it hit this time:

Of course, being an SOS Lure, Nancy Gas is incapable of missing. But just to be super ultra sure (or because we kinda all picked at the same time…), we threw in two Hypno-goggles & a Big Magnet for good measure…

But so far, apart from the details like overlevelled Cogs, it’s all been classic TTO gameplay. Good stuff. But for that, we must pay. And dearly we will…

Okay, it’s not that bad. The Foreman fight introduces the same neo-mechanics as those of the Scrap Factory, but with the addition of this “Damage Over Time” thing that you see in the image above. However, I’m personally pleased with the use of Damage Over Time for its straightforward nature — & the fact that it’s not actually new (it was new way back in v3.0.0), I suppose. It provides a predictable source of damage that adds urgency to the fight.

Of course, the Steel version is a lot more difficult than the Scrap one. Cogs with way more HP, way more damage output, & a “Time Down” debuff^[2] that really removes almost all of your turn timer!

I was surprised, perhaps pleasantly so, to see an Über — by the name of Ricebowl — in my second-ever Steel run. I say “perhaps” only because I fear for his little life. He’s a very smol cat, & his laff meter only goes up to 39! So when we got to the Foreman fight, it was srs bsns:

I was happy to use a Mr. Freeze of my own, that I had just recently obtained from a V.P. run. Indeed, this was Rusa’s first time ever using an SOS card!

Transcription of the text in the above image

Center Silo Control Room

Cogs Miss!
Cog attacks are less likely to hit!

Rusa [SpeedChat]: No problem.

[Mover & Shaker]: Ha Ha Ha

I appreciate Ricebowl’s bravery in asking someone else to use a Cogs Miss for them, but I think I’d wanna have a backup plan for myself (e.g. my own Mr. Freeze) if I were an Über who knew that it was the kind of thing likely to save my life.

The irony of Cogs Miss, of course — and this applies to Cogs Miss (& Toons Hit) SOSes of any number of stars — is that the Cogs still hit you anyway:

Thankfully, Ricebowl made it through the run just fine. 😅

As yet, I’ve not really much to say about this brand-new version of the Sellbot Factory other than the general first-blush comments that I already made about the Foreman battle in the Scrap Factory^[3]. Most of my experiences have involved someone (or someones) using a reward/level-7-gag pretty much as soon as the Foreman battle commences. Although I thank them for those rewards, this has obscured my understanding, downplayed my own contributions to the battles, & ultimately reinforced my first-blush analysis that few players want to really deal — seriously and/or in detail — with what I called the “various layers of fuckery”^[3].

That’s fine, but I think that in future entries I will be able to form a more serious analysis, & thus more serious opinion, on the Steel Factory (particularly its final battle). 🙂

Footnotes for “Steel yourself”

1. [↑] See the “The wild, wild streets of Toontown Central” section of the first instalment.
2. [↑] See the “Suits ’n’ Tasks ’n’ suits ’n’ Tasks ’n’ suits ’n’ Tasks ’n’ …” section of the previous instalment.
3. [↑] See the “What in Sam Hill’s goin’ on here?” section of the eighth instalment.

Ten tens

In any event, opening myself up to all manner of Merit-grinding — including all routes of both Scrap & Steel, in addition to Cog Buildings — is sure to propel my progression through the SBHQ disguise. And, with another DDL part IV ToonTask under my belt, I hit triple-digit maxlaff!!:

Triple-digit maxlaff is traditionally the big milestone. Early versions of TTO continually released new ways of obtaining maxlaff beyond the main ToonTaskline, so the ultimate milestone of “max maxlaff”^[1] was a moving target that almost noöne actually achieved anyway, for practical reasons. Getting to triple digits is a sign that you’ve probably finished the main Taskline, which means that you’re officially in Endgame Territory™.

However, in my case, I haven’t completed DDL part IV quite yet. Actually, I’m going to intentionally hold off on completing the very last DDL Task! Why would I do such a thing‽ Well, back on 2024-06-16, TTR released a news post entitled “The Toon Resistance Strikes Back” that reads (emphasis in the original):

For those of you who don’t know — and even for those who do: the Resistance has traditionally relied on partnerships with Professor Flake at The Precipitation Foundation and Shep Ahoy at All For Nautical to prepare Toons and build their Lawbot and Bossbot Cog Disguises, respectively.

But things have changed.

[…]

We’ve recently been working with Toon Headquarters to re-evaluate the Cog Disguise process, to rally up shopkeepers, and to announce that a series of over fifty new ToonTasks are in the works to replace the Lawbot and Bossbot Disguise ToonTasks, plus some of what is offered to Toons working on their Cashbot Disguise!

I already have my CBHQ disguise, so I won’t be able to check out whatever they’re adding to that part of DDL’s Taskline (at least, not on Rusa). But it sounds like that part is intended to be a minor change, whereas the “over fifty new ToonTasks”(!!) are something that Rusa will be able to experience, so long as I retain (read: don’t turn in) my final DDL Task! Not turning this last Task in is probably overly cautious, but I wanna make sure that I don’t goof it up, because I want those joocy new Tasks!!

It might seem rude for TTR to toss out the original TTO versions of the LBHQ & BBHQ disguise Tasklines in favour of some fancy new shiRt, but trust me. I’ve done these two Tasklines plenty of times in the past, & I think that that’s more than enough, considering that they are — in my, & probably most people’s, opinions — pretty much the worst Tasklines in the game. They’re boring as all heck, unimaginative, & consist in no more than doing the same single thing over & over a handful of times.

The real problem is that I’m predicating my ability to move on through certain large chunks of endgame content upon TTR’s release of said “over fifty new ToonTasks”. On the one hand, given the lack of deadline, it’s reasonable to give up on Rusa ever doing these Tasks, with the knowledge that I can still do them some day, on another Toon. On the other, there are plenty of things that I can still do on Rusa without completely finishing DDL; moreover, I hope & pray that TTR would not make such an explicit teaser of new content in this way before it being not long “until everything is finalized”; & finally… do I really want to make another full-blown non-Über Toon just to do the new Tasks…?

So for now, I’m going to take TTR at their word. Thus, Rusa will be mysteriously “missing” the 3 maxlaff that she would get by turning in her last DDL Task, & I won’t be able to engage in LBHQ/BBHQ content until further notice. I also think(??) that I can’t do any other ToonTasks for the time being, although I might try to work around that hypothetical limitation if I run out of things to do in the future.

Footnotes for “Ten tens”

1. [↑] As far as I know, this ultimate milestone was probably(?) originally 100, assuming that the original version of the main Taskline granted 85 maxlaff in total. The release of fishing & SBHQ in late 2003 would have increased this to 100 + 7 + 5 = 112. By the time of TTO’s shutdown in 2013, this had increased to 137. In the current version of TTR, it has been increased to 140 — although Rusa hasn’t touched that part of the game yet.

Tooth ace

Oh, & I did get that Two-Face promotion…

Although I haven’t yet engaged with CBHQ in earnest, I did get invited to help my friend Emerald Duck with a Coin run. Then, not to far into the run, the original group leader was surprised to see that I was Soundless…:

Transcription of the above image

Rusa: i didnt know it was on toonhq

Emerald Duck: that was my bad

Apparently, the group had been listed on ToonHQ as a “Sound” run. You see, there are some things that you can manually configure about the way that your group is listed, & one of them is labelled “gags”. In reality, the “gags” setting only has three options: “Sound”, “Soundless”, or unspecified. So really, it should be called the “Sound” option (lol). This setting is somewhat commonly used, & almost exclusively to exclude Soundless (or otherwise weak Sound) Toons — although I do very occasionally see a “Soundless” group listed.

Obviously I avoid any group listed as “Sound” like the plague, but in this case, I had no idea that the group was even on ToonHQ at all! And by the time that I showed up, we were already going inside the Mint… Thankfully, they weren’t upset about it, on account of my gags at least being maxed.

“Soundless”

Speaking of being Soundless, I sometimes wonder if all the Soundless Toons have been swallowed whole & spit back up with an entirely different character build. Either that, or they made their Toon thinking they’d be Soundless, and then proceeded to chicken out & get Sound anyway:

I mean, mein Gott, half of this latter one’s gags are Sound!! And these aren’t even the only examples that I’ve seen recently!!! What is going on??? I don’t see anyone with maxed Trap named “Trapless Dog”…

Clouds in the void

But before we get back to the serious bits, it’s time for a bit of collective OOB shenanigans in the classic location: DDL’s playground.

“Beanfest in the void” indeed. For a while, we had a solid two or so dozen Toons chilling out here in the grey nothingness, looking in upon the sleepy DDL bedgoers always looking for in-bounds beanfest action. We even had someone who ended up on a “virtual staircase” glitch within the void, meaning that every step they took — no matter the direction — brought them higher in elevation.

I took advantage of this to get a vantage point most suitable for viewing the DDL bed:

The posts of the headboard can be seen in the far bottom corners of the above image, & I think the rest is self-evident. Maybe if I land on the pillow, I’ll fall fast asleep… 😴

Sell bought age queue

😪 Wh— huh? We’re back? I’m awake…

It’s time for some SBHQ grind…!

Mingler.

Hollywood.

Hollywood…? Yep! Although level 13+ Cogs may be relatively new to TTR, level 13+ Cog disguises have been with us ever since SBHQ was first released. Getting to level 13 grants me nifty teleport access to SBHQ, but a disguise isn’t maxed until it hits level 50! So let’s keep going…

As usual, I joined an SOS shopping group^[1]. But traffic was looking a bit slow, so I was stuck in a group of just two, alongside the group leader Blake The Bear. Although we hadn’t waited that long, Blake was getting rather impatient rather quickly:

Transcription of the text in the above image

• Blake The Bear
• Rusa

Going To: Sellbot Towers

---

[in the elevator]

Blake The Bear: i believe in us

Rusa: …

I was… not amused. I mean, sure, could we duo the V.P.? Of course. But that means getting split up over both sides, such that each of us is soloing every Cog battle! The rewards — particularly SOSes — required to do this competently would defeat a lot of the purpose of SOS shopping in the first place: getting good rewards! I’m not using my SOSes just to get more SOSes!!

We reached a compromise of sorts. I wanted to start the run with no fewer than four Toons total, & what we ended up with was… three. That’s more than two, but our third member was okay with trioing, so it was two against one at that point.

Fortunately for me, I was never on the solo side, so I duoed both of the Cog battles to which the V.P. assigned me. I ended up using no rewards! But for the first battle, I was sided with Blake, who quickly learnt something that he hadn’t previously noticed: I am, indeed, Soundless.

Well, that’s a new one. I’ve been accused of witchery before, but not on account of my gags… It was too late for Blake, though! He had already friended me!! 😉

And indeed, we did succeed in… uhm, flossing (the dance move??) on the V.P..

Transcription of the chatbubbles in the above image

Rusa: GJ

Jesse: gg

Blake The Bear: that was so fun

It was pretty fun indeed!! I think that next time, I do want four Toons, so that I’m guaranteed not to have to solo. But otherwise, it was fine. :P Thanks to our Epic Stunning Skills™, the fight against the V.P. was actually super fast, even with only 37.5% as many Toons as usual!

Although this isn’t extremely noteworthy, I did get to do a short Steel Factory run with a rare sighting of a TTR staff member in uniform:

As you can see, their Toon ID doesn’t have the usual TTID-[A-Z]{4}-[A-Z]{4} format, instead simply reading STAFF MEMBER. For some reason, I feel a little awkward running with staff members, but the way I figure it, my chances of someone saying some snippy shiRt to me is a lot lower if there’s a staff member right next to them…

Meretriciousness

And, lo & behold, max Merits:

It seems that max Merits have been lowered from the classic 5 500 to 4 450 (≈ 80.9%). This makes a lot of sense, considering that one of UNM’s stated goals was to reduce perceived “grindiness”. Moreover, if we compare this figure to the Merits earnt by completing a long Steel run^[2], then this is equivalent to a bit more than roughly 2.8 such runs. Given that a pre-UNM long Factory awarded 776 Merits^[3], this ≈2.8 figure compares very favourably (by a factor of ≈2.5×) to the “a bit more than 7(!) longs” of pre-UNM max Merits.

Then again, this is pretty clearly an apples-&-oranges comparison. The pre-UNM Factory was just a lot easier in every respect, when compared to Steel. If we try to force an apples-&-apples comparison by looking at long Scraps instead of long Steels, then we see that max Merits now requires more than 7 longs — & indeed, even more than the pre-UNM version!

It’s pretty obvious that, at least from TTR’s perspective, this is missing the point: if you don’t want lengthy grind, then you’ve got to start taking down Steel Factories as if they were Scraps. This sounds great in theory, but I’ve found at least two sources of trouble with it in practice:

• This assumes that you reasonably can do Steels, & moreover, that doing so is consistent & fast enough to justify not just spamming Scraps. This assumption is violated by at least some Toons (and/or some players), like e.g. Übers. This by no means implies that such players cannot grind, & even max out, their SBHQ disguises, but it does imply that they do not benefit from — & indeed, are arguably penalised by — UNM.

• More importantly, UNM introduced a fragmentation of Sellbot facilities that never before existed. Pre-UNM, there was one (1) Factory. One. The only fragmentation was on the basis of route, with most routes settling on either long or short (largely to the exclusion of media). Now, the same route fragmentation exists in almost the same way, but in addition, we now have two (2) genuinely distinct Factories! Assuming no media, this effectively leads to four very distinct types of Factory run, thus making it even more difficult than pre-UNM non-Sellbot Cog facilities (& indeed, twice as difficult as the UNM versions) to find the type that you actually want/need.

  Moreover, the fact that these new facility types are just way more demanding is naturally going to put strain on what kinds of Toons & players people will be willing to tolerate in their challenging facility runs, thus further fragmenting the social space of the Cog HQ.

All this is not to say that the overall idea was somehow a mistake (even for SBHQ), but it is a reflexion on my experience — & thus, one part of my perspective.

In particular, even when presented with onerous Merit requirements, I found myself often just chipping away at them very slowly, by the odd Scrap run here, the occasional Sellbot Building there… And that’s definitely better characterised as “slow, grindy” than it is “fast, not grindy”.

I’ve six fully maxed gag tracks, & my org Drop is relatively powerful in the context of the Steel Factory, but you know what’s easier than looking for & joining (or starting & recruiting for) Steel runs? Not doing that. This is just SBHQ — a Cog HQ that I’ve maxed countless times before — & I didn’t honestly expect to find myself worrying “will they be OK with my Soundlessness?” when looking to run a damn Factory.

I’ll be working on this problem more in the future, but for now, it’s time for some Scraps.

Scrapcifically

More specifically, I did quite a handful of Scraps (& Cog Buildings, as well) with Amber Dog (Sway), Sir Peanut Butter, & Good ol’ Jack McGrooven, all of whom had started their Toons quite recently. I originally met them by joining as the 4^th Toon of their Scrap Factory ToonHQ group, but they subsequently decided that ToonHQ was overrated:

They seem to have agreed to refer to me as ru, or frequently the reduplicated ru ru (the latter of which I take to be hypocoristic). 🥲

I’ve mentioned previously that rusa isn’t in the SpeedChat+ whitelist, so it remains up to the speaker as to how they render my name. In roughly decreasing order of prevalence, I’ve seen:

1. deer. (Less effective if I’m not the only deer in the room…)
2. ru, ru ru.
3. rosa. (Lowering the first vowel to obtain Rosa, from Latin rosa “rose”, also source of English rose, Rose.)
4. ruse. (Presumably not the English pronunciation…)
5. r usa.
6. ruse a.

I don’t think that I’ve seen r u 's a or ru 's a — yet, at least.

I’ve been lamenting the loss of the Side Entrance this whole time since the release of UNM, so I may’ve avoided rubbing salt into my own wounds by visiting the room where it formerly existed. This room is the Duct Storage Room (not to be confused with the Duck Storage Room where we keep the rubber duckies), & it appears that TTR placed a little something extra there, to give it at least some function to replace its old one:

Tuct away is a sneaky little Big Magnet restock barrel, accessible only by pushing a wooden crate into place. So far I’ve only found one occasion to use this barrel myself, but I guess it’s better than nothing.

One aspect of the new UNM facilities that I’ve yet to mention is that it’s no longer possible to start the supervisor fight without the participation of all Toons in the facility. Pre-UNM, the supervisor fights were basically just normal fights that you walked up to, with the slight exception that initiating the fight automatically sent a message to all other Toons in the facility indicating that the fight had begun. This meant that, in principle, it was possible to do things like finishing the supervisor battle before one or more Toons could join, causing those Toons to miss out on the entire set of rewards (i.e. no Merits/Cogbucks/&c., no ToonTask credit, no gag XP, &c.).

With UNM, there are basically three ways to join the supervisor battle. In decreasing order of practical likelihood, & simultaneously increasing order of wall-clock time taken:

1. Run into the battle zone, as normal.
2. If you’re still not in the battle some 8 or so(?) seconds after the first time that (A1.) is performed by anyone in the facility, then you’re automatically teleported into the battle.
3. If you fail to qualify for (A2.) as a result of already being in a battle at the time that it would occur, then a 60-second timer begins, at the end of which you’re presumably(?) teleported into the battle.

I say it’s “no longer possible” to start the supervisor fight without the participation of all Toons in the facility, but technically I’m not really sure. I only know about (A3.) because I somehow managed to trigger a race condition in the implementation by doing (A1.) & (A3.) “at the same time”…:

…But I’m not really sure what happens at the end of the 60 seconds.

Pain Mixer

In any case, during a Scrap run, I finally made it all the way into the Paint Mixer, to pilfer the barrels of its Paint Mixer Storage Room:

Transcription of the chatbubbles in the above image

Rusa: wow so many barrels

Bear Witness: first time doing this

I basically had to convince my party that we should check it out. It was everyone’s first time seeing this room, of course. I hope that I can check out the Steel Factory version — maybe its barrels are even more powerful!

Unfortunately, the Paint Mixer’s location means that you inevitably have to go at least a little bit out of the way to make practical use of it, no matter which of the two standard routes you take. With a standard long route, the time to visit the Paint Mixer would presumably be immediately after the Warehouse fight. With the now-extinct Side Entrance, it would (hypothetically) be very practical to incorporate the Paint Mixer into a medium or long^[5] route. However, even without the Side Entrance, I think that it may be possible to concoct a practical long route that incorporates the Paint Mixer:

1. Defeat the Lobby.
2. Pass through the Lobby Foyer & take a left at the Lobby Hallway, to defeat the Boiler Room.
3. Take an immediate left at the West Catwalk, to defeat all six Cogs of the Pipe Room.
4. Go straight across Stomper Alley to defeat the Duct Room.
5. Take a left onto Stomper Alley, pass through the stompers, & defeat the Lava Room Foyer.
6. (Optionally loot barrels in the Lava Storage Room.)
7. Pass through the Oil Room Hallway to defeat the Oil Room, & press the button.
8. Take the West Catwalk to the Warehouse, & defeat the Cogs there.
9. Take the East Catwalk to the Paint Mixer, & loot the Paint Mixer Storage Room^[6].
10. Defeat the Gear Room.
11. Take the East Catwalk back to the Warehouse, & proceed as normal.

TL;DR: Initially skip the Gear Room, then come back to it after defeating the Warehouse, at which point you can also pay a visit to the Paint Mixer.

Not bad, right? You do have to backtrack the East Catwalk, but the East Catwalk is considerably shorter than its West counterpart, & this is at least partially made up for by the fact that you avoid the Lobby Hallway backtracking required for the standard long route. I suspect that if the Paint Mixer were skipped entirely in Algorithm B, then it would be negligibly longer than the standard long route. So honestly, if you’re reading this & you do Factories (preferably Steels) yourself, try to convince your party to give it a go! Tell me how it goes!!

Footnotes for “Sell bought age queue”

1. [↑] See the “I will shop until I drop” section of the previous instalment.

2. [↑] The actual value is, rather surprisingly, unclear. In the pre-UNM Factory, a long run (with no further specification of what the route is) was guaranteed to yield exactly 776^[3] Merits every time. UNM made some Cog levels random, & because Merits are based on Cog level, this implies that even a fixed route can vary significantly in Merits. This would be fine, except that, of course, none of this was documented, so we don’t necessarily know what those random possibilities are.

   Even the TTR wiki itself — which, although not run by TTR, is at least semi-officially sanctioned by TTR as a “Community Partner” project — lists Merit values with the caveat that “Merits listed below are within an average range”, & doesn’t even include a range for the usual short Scrap route! The range listed for long Steel is “1 525〜1 630”, which I’m interpreting as an average of (1 525 + 1 630)∕2 = 1 577.5.

3. [↑] The original value in TTO was 776∕2 = 388, but twice that (i.e. 776) during Cog Invasions. Very early on (presumably pre-beta), TTR correctly recognised this as a fundamentally broken mechanic for various reasons^[4], & opted to just reify the in-an-Invasion values as the only values.

4. [↑] Whilst in a Factory, the fact of being in — or not being in — an invaded district is virtually unobservable. Unlike in Cog Buildings, where Invasions are expected to make gag training more efficient, invasions do not affect Cog facilities, thus making this mechanic effectively nonsense. Moreover, a Cog facility run takes a long enough time that it’s not clear how many Merits one would get from a run where the district went from invaded to uninvaded (or vice versā) mid-run.

   And perhaps most importantly, double Merits (or Cogbucks, or what have you) from Invasions implies that players have a much lower incentive to bother grinding promos when there’s no Invasion to take advantage of. Given that players have virtually no control over these Invasions (especially pre-LBHQ, but still basically true post-LBHQ), this wild difference in incentive has no basis whatsoever. On the other hand, if Invasions happen to be plentiful enough that one can expect to usually find an Invasion to take advantage of whenever, then this mechanic degenerates into 776 Merits per long run anyway — with the added annoyance of having to make sure that one is in the magically “correct” district.

5. [↑] The Side Entrance is (was…) well-known for its medium routes & its short, but not so much for a long route. My idea here is that, if the Steel Factory & the Side Entrance hypothetically coëxisted, then it would be practical — & perhaps even desirable — to do a long or long-ish route that visits the Paint Mixer at an opportune point along the route. In particular, I’d expect this route to take the West Catwalk to the Boiler Room — possibly stopping to do the Pipe Room along the way, if it wasn’t already defeated at that point.

6. [↑] Optionally, this step may be exchanged in the order with the following step.

I’m sorry that I didn’t build you a stronger ship, young Rusa

It was in the midst of helping Amber Dog out with some Cog Buildings that, for the first time, I had opportunity to actually use any one of my level 7 gags. And, appropriately, it was the Drop one: the Toontanic.

Transcription of the chatbubbles in the above video

Amber Dog: I like how we’re wasting this max gags [sīc]

Pretty much all of the level 7 gags are showy, but I mean, what could be better than dropping a whole-ass boat onto a group of your enemies? Nothing, that’s what.

Sick’s beans

And finally… my shovel levelled up.

Oh, boi! Let’s see what we’ve got here…

I’ve got the Smarty Pansy, Upsy Daisy, Tinted Rose…

Oh, & six is an even number. You know what that means… Unfortunately I fumbled the screenshot, but yay for +1 extra maxlaff! 🙂 C u next thyme! 🧡

Sunday funnies

Funny papers (crossword puzzle not included)

ℹ️ The following image was carefully extracted from the unyielding clutches of 𝕏itter™^® (pronounced /⁠ˈʃɪt.ə⁠(ɹ)⁠/), adapted from a No Context Toontown (@NoContextTTO) post.

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