The hapless fate of Unicolor, 1: Birth is ruination.
if winter’s cold,
then spring is death;
i deign to gasp for my first breath.
a smiling sun
on central ground
when in my presence only frown’d.
these pixels as
they pierce my skin
each punish me for my first sin.
precious little
can be known
for why i find myself alone.
* * *
Well. That’s not very Toony…
Wherefore, my wretchèd darling?
Sometimes, an idea is so ponderously stupid that no right-thinking being would ever imagine it as more than a sick joke; a whimsical perversion born of the mind’s flexible capacity for negation.
Semantics
“Ironman”, you say? Not so. They mean permadeath — or, *permasad? Hardcore Toontown.
Impressive nonetheless, considering that there appear to be a whopping 53 episodes in the series, culminating in taking back Daisy Gardens, Inc. by defeating a four-star SBFO. Basically the ultra big bad Endy McEndgame superboss of TTR. (One part of a custom expansion added relatively late in TTR’s history.)
The shining precedent
Now this is what I was looking for. Jeporite appears to be primarily a RuneScape player. Makes sense given that the origin of “ironman” — including the rather bizarre term itself — was, I’m told, in that game. Never played it myself, but we’ve seen that “ironicality” (if you will) proves abstract enough to be applicable to… well, at least two (2) other MMORPGs.
The good news is that this video was so scrumptious — delectable, even — that my newly-vibrating bones compel’d me to immediately archive a copy in that one directory on my HDD where I keep extremely important audiovisual materials (mostly shaky handheld camcorder footage of pseudo-rock bands playing in various dingy basements).
The bad news is that it was also posted on the 1st of April. To his credit, Jeporite makes it from Create-a-Toon all the way through the TTC taskline. Yet the 1st episode is also the last.
Perhaps this is partly owed to Jeporite cranking up the masochism to levels that I, of all people, could scarcely have imagined. No gag shoppe meant that he was forced to rely on gag trees for restocks. Gardening operates in real time, with a given tree taking anywhere from 3 to 21 actual days to grow from seed, and a mature tree bearing fruit (i.e. gags) only once daily.
Very early on, this could pace the game in a healthy way. Once you’ve unlocked more than eight gags, though — that’s individual gag-types, not gag tracks — it becomes virtually unworkable.[1] But it also meant that, upon unlocking the Sound track, he had to get that first plantable Bike Horn from a gag barrel! In the Sellbot Factory!!
And that’s all she wrote.
I’m not really sure what I expected. If Toontown was designed for two things, then they would be: (1.) making money to help Disney® acquire Pixar®, and (2.) making even more money to help Michael Eisner get that 17th yacht.
Wait, hold on. Lemme try that again.
If Toontown was designed for two things, then they would be: (1.) playability for all ages, not the least of which being children, and (2.) encouraging coöperation. As it turns out, (1.) is all in the aesthetics and in the fact that I can say bull, I can say shirt, and yet I somehow cannot say *bull shirt (a t-shirt that celebrates my undying love for Bullion Mints). The game is clearly dominated by (2.), to the point that the surprising depth of the resultant turn-based-strategic game-mechanics fails to meaningfully penetrate the demesne of (1.).
The point is that (2.) virtually denies the possibility of ironman. Nothing is impossible, yet some possibilities are destined never to be realised — not so much consigned to the dustbin of history as they are an infinity of unimaginable silent inchoätions that could never even begin to begin, languishing in the stillborn sea of latency.
But what if I did it anyway? As a joke. Betwixt friends.
I don’t wanna do it any more than you want me to do it.
Gagcessibility
It doesn’t help that we’re currently in a worse timeline than the one Jeporite was in when he made that video. That Bike Horn was made possible by The Sellbot Factory’s (you heard me — The Sellbot Factory’s) Side Entrance. I shall never forgive TTR for doing the unspeakable to my belovèd Side Entrance; my king; my one true love.
Not even if they add it back. I can only offer 50% forgiveness at this point. I think that’s pretty generous, all things considered.
I’m not doing the “no gag shoppe” thing anyway, but I liked the idea of having to unlock a gag track and then really unlock it via gag barrel. For now, I’ll keep this lighter rule, mostly because it’s probably[2] possible to abuse randomly-selected Coin Mint floor layouts to find a floor — after much trial & error — that makes the relevant gag barrel accessible without fighting any cogs. Maybe.
Doomdles Doodles
I already wrote a whole essay about how doodles, at least in any state in which they exist or have ever existed within TTO or TTR, don’t belong in Toontown. TTR doubled down on them. We truly live in the darkest timeline.
Transcription of the above
WHO WOULD WIN?
- my actual character-build [Toon-Up]
- rewards for actually playing the game [SOS cards, healing remotes, & unites]
━[ versus ]━
- Archibald [the doodle]
Of course, doodles take on a whole new meaning if you purposely play in a way antithetical to the game itself (read: ironman). In fact, doodles might be the sole thing that could be — rather dubiously, to put it lightly — held up as evidence that Toontown was designed with the intent to accommodate solo play.
Unfortunately, according to the gods of Toontown, accommodating solo play is incompatible with accommodating the continued existence of the sinews in my hand. We’ll see who wins. (Or not.)
There are no superheroes in this endgame
The big question is, of course: how far can I actually go?
Real answer: Not very.
Hypothetic answer: The first place to look is the main taskline.
- TTC
-
A real breeze.
- DDock
-
DDock tries to put the pressure on at least a little, just to make sure you know this ain’t no stinkin’ TTC. A single 2+ storey cog building, sans Lure. Doäble… probably‽ After plenty of training‽‽
- DG
-
Run-ending. Devastating. Calamitous.
Perhaps counterintuitively, the usual noob trap — the TP access task — is a difficult one, but only comes in, like, 3rd place. Tier-7 cogs are no joke; but on the other hand… invasions exist. Highly annoying, but that’s mostly it.
Soloïng two 2-storey buildings & two 3-storey(!) buildings is, on balance, more srs bsns. However, by this point I have Lure unloct, so… fine?
The real kicker is Coach Courgette. The ultra big bad Endy McEndgame superboss for me is, unlike for Cinder_Ash, soloïng a Scrap.
- MML & beyond
-
Can we go beyond endgame? If the biggest, baddest boss Of All (My) Time™ proves vincible, then MML is suddenly unloct.
Once again, the usual noob trap — Cleff’s insatiable demand for baked goods with which to humiliate friend & foe alike — is a nonissue. Obviously I’m far beyond measly level 5 Throw by this point. The most difficult task is final gag track training, which is basically just a 3-storey building. Been there, done that.
The Brrrgh & DDL essentially just want a heap of high-storey buildings and some particular tier 7〜8 cogs. Positively massive grind, but mostly consists in waiting for the relevant invasion and then grinding it up.
And I guess that would be it! Wow. I can’t wait to see whether other cog HQs besides Sellbot HQ might be releast. Who could say? Maybe Mike Eisner knows.
Irontoon
All right. You know the jrill. Clearly, there are no men (🤮🤮🤮) in Toontown, so a fortiori there’s no iron “man”. Instead we have irontoon, which is where you leave friend requests enabled but manually reject all of them.
Okay, no. I mean, you should reject all men, but that’s not the point. Usually we think of ironicality as two rules:
- We do not do things together, you & I
-
I can’t join others’ cog battles, and if someone joins mine, I have to leave (typically by ning). And of course all instanced cog-fighting content (buildings, facilities, bosses, etc.) must be solo’d. For consistency, noncoöperation must be extended to other activities that give meaningful rewards: doodle interactions, trolley, golfing, racing, parties, fish bingo, duck tank, and Cartoonival Cavalcades.
Also, don’t water my plants. Ew. This is why I reject all friend requests…
Weird niche cases don’t really matter, but here they are:
- Other toons cannot water anything connected to my house (viz. ten flower slots + eight tree slots).
- Picnic games are fine. They give no rewards.
- Technically, someone can unite me without joining my cog battle. In this case I have to ASAP (or d/c ASAP if I’m worried about jellybean unites; see below).
- There are your things & stuff, and my things & stuff, and never the twain shall meet
-
Not really meaningful for Toontown. This is in stark contrast to MapleStory, where I consider the “no trading” rule to be far more important than the “no partying” rule. This says a lot about both games.
Still, I have to try to avoid unites if possible. Also, any gifts sent to me will be summarily destroyed with extreme prejudice.
We can summarise the above as “doN’t touch me. I bite! [growling] STAy away…!! [strident hissing]”.[3] Simple enough?
(Also, I’ll tentatively be following the rule under which I’m unable to buy the first gag of a brand-new track from a shoppe, as mentioned above.)
Meet Unicolor!
Needless to say I had to name this littol troublemaker after the one & only unicolor (lowercase edition), so now I’ve got the full binomen going on.
💡 Did you know? There’s a wastebasket icon 🗑️ next to each toon because the game has determined that both of my toons are trash.
True to my name, I’m no fewer than three colours.
💡 Did you know? I am physically incapable of making monochrome toons.
Maxlaff is a far graver limiting factor for me than it is for Normal Toons™ whom’st can heal each other, slay cogs together, etc.. So, in the meantime whilst I wasn’t playing Unicolor, I logged on each day to at least get that gardenin’ goin’.
Day 1: Can I just… go back to the Toontorial? Please.
But the thyme is ripe. The thyme will make for some delicious soop, which will supply the nutrition I need to recover the notorious Blaquebored eRazor™ from my first foe: a Phlunccy.
💡 Did you know? It’s so easy to recover Blackboard Erasers only because 15-base-maxlaff Übers refuse to do the same, leaving the Cogs’ pockets superfluous with the things.
And we’re off & running, having officially gradu8’d from the Toontorial. Time to get my fluffy deer tushie positively handed to me by some literal tier-1 cogs.
Ah, well, you know what they say about Throw gags. May as well “Throw” ’em right in the bin, ’cause they never hit anyway, am I right? That’s why I’ve got my Squ—
Mmkay, well if I survive this round, I can still defeat this one (1) (singular) Short Change so long as I don’t miss agai—
It’s not all bad news. Eventually I landed enough hits to get my level 2’s.
Between you & me, I’ve never actually picked Sound before. That being said, Toon-Up is doing me (or anyone else) precisely zero favours, given that I refuse to so much as countenance the merest presence of a fellow toon.
Transcription of the above
Toon-Up: Toon-Up gags can heal other Toons in battle.
Sound: Sound gags affect all Cogs, but are not very powerful.
Sound isn’t terribly good for me either, but I can’t really.com/plane.[4] I nyu exactly what I was signing up for.
Anyway, time for another exciting milestone: my first fight against two or more cogs!
The level 2 capitulated forthwith, so I shall surely prevail over the 3 ere lo—
How dare! How dare! Try it again, you won’t!!
💡 Did you know? Short Changes are the most powerful cog species in the game.
Okay, not 4ever. Thanx 2 the button, I am technically still permadeath (≝ hardcore)! But admittedly, the distinction is dubious, and I expect to lose it très soonly.
∗ ∗ ∗
Deerplan
Wanna see more of this nonsense for some reason? You have to beg me for it. Sorry.
More seriously, any potential further instalments will be journalled on a day-by-day basis, meaning real days. The 24-hour kind. Most days would probably not be as exciting as day 1, since it’d inevitably come down to excruciatingly slow gag XP grinding. So probably many days per instalment.
Anyway BYe
🧡💜💚
Footnotes
- [↑] For reference, a mature, standardly-built (read: neither an Über nor a semi-reversed) toon has 6 gag-types per track × 6 tracks = 36 gag-types unlocked. (Level 7 gags not included, for obvious reasons.)
- [↑] Source: My hazy recollection of one or two dozen Mints I did recently.
- [↑] Incidentally, this is also how I act if you ever meet me IRL (wherever that is).
- [↑] Disclaimer: I’m not sponsored by Really Wireless®. I could be, though. 🤷🏽♀️ Jus sayin’. HMU. 🤙🏽