Blood-Faced Volleyball

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Familiar number: 12
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Blood-Faced Volleyball
Icky sporting goods Spiritual enhancement Obvious pairing?

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Ability: Increases stat gains by the square root of its weight.

Throne/Bjorn: Unknown

Hatchling: blood-faced volleyball

Familiar-Specific Equipment: palm-frond toupee

	Ultimate Cage Match	Scavenger Hunt	Obstacle Course	Hide and Seek

Mumming Trunk Abilities:

*Hover for details

Cannot breathe underwater

Combat Messages

• Regular Message:

<name> smiles approvingly.

• With lucky Tam O'Shanter equipped:

<name> winks at you. Which is very, very disconcerting.

• With miniature gravy-covered maypole equipped:

<name> does a couple of floating laps around the maypole.

• With wax lips equipped:

<name> smiles extra hard with the help of his wax lips.

Arena Messages

• When entered in an Ultimate Cage Match:

<name>, not having any teeth, claws, or weapons, is not particularly well-suited for this event.

Notes

• Sombrero vs Volleyball contains information about when sombrero- and volleyball-type familiars are best for stat gains based on familiar weights and monster level.
• In cases where the stat gain is not an integer, what actually happens is that an entire stat point is awarded a fraction of the time. For example, a two-pound volleyball grants 2^1/2 ≈ 1.4 stats, and you could expect to get 2 bonus stats 40% of fights and 1 bonus stat the other 60%.
• In terms of boosting stat gains via familiar equipment, the volleyball can be outfitted with wax lips (+3 XP), a lead necklace (+3 lbs), a palm-frond toupee (+5 lbs), or an annoying pitchfork (+5 ML; +1.25 XP). Given an outfit configuration that lacks familiar equipment, and letting the effective weight of the volleyball be v for that configuration, the stat gains from a fight with equipment are functions of v:
  • W(v) = v^1/2 + 3 for the wax lips
  • P(v) = v^1/2 + 1.25 for the pitchfork
  • F(v) = (v + 5)^1/2 for the familiar equipment
  • L(v) = (v + 3)^1/2 for the lead necklace
• Straightforward algebra finds that, for volleyballs heavier than one pound, the wax lips always yield the best stat gains, followed by the pitchfork, the toupee, and the lead necklace. For one-pound volleyballs only, the toupee beats the pitchfork.
• Attempting to name a Blood-Faced Volleyball "Wilson" will result in it being automatically renamed to "Baden", "Brine", "Mikasa", "Molten", "Spalding", or "Tachikara".

History

• Prior to NS13, the volleyball provided weight/4 bonus stats.
• With the arrival of NS13, the square root formula was briefly floored, so rounding no longer happened. For more information on the new volleyball formula, see this forum thread, and Jick's post indicating the fix (not flooring the result).

References

• This familiar is a reference to the 2000 movie, Cast Away, in which the character played by Tom Hanks is stranded on an island and obtains a volleyball from one the packages he was delivering. He painted a face on the volleyball and named it Wilson. He even spoke to it. To encourage creativity amongst its players, KoL will not let you name your volleyball Wilson. You can, however, use the name Wilson in conjuction with another name.
• Baden, Brine, Mikasa, Molten, Spalding, and Tachikara are all brands of volleyballs.

See Also

• Stat Gains from Fights