Z is for Zootomist

Z is for Zootomist is the Spring 2025 special challenge path, introduced on February 15th, 2025. This path adds variant rules and restrictions to an ascension run. Its description in The Bureau of Reincarnation reads "You are experimenting on familiars and choosing some to graft on to your own body."

Restrictions

Class and skills

• None of your permed skills are available.
• You do not level up from substats and cannot gain substats at all from any source.
• You also don't have a main stat, and your highest stat isn't used to calculate your level.
• You can only level up from grafting familiars to yourself, gaining one level per familiar.
• You have access to some path-specific skills after grafting familiars to certain body parts.

Divergences

• Your adventure begins with ‎Zoonopeia.
• Your Campsite includes a link to Your Zootomy Laboratory alongside your usual stuff.

Text

See The Council of Loathing/Z is for Zootomist.

Strategy

General

• Leveling up in this path is dependent solely on how much familiar experience gained, and so progress and strategies will revolve around your ability to gain familiar experience.
• Before entering the path, it's worth it to collect some familiars beforehand instead of having to obtain them in-run.
  • In addition to the 11 familiars used for grafting, be sure to have some extra familiars for non-grafted normal use.
• Don't worry too much about the base stats from grafting, if you graft a lot then you should have more than enough to equip whatever you need.

Grafting

In general:

• the nipples give powerful buffs that also might make you level up your familiars faster
• the head, shoulders, and buttocks give powerful boosts to your passive intrinsic
• the feet give useful skills including olfaction, banishing, and item dropping
• the hands just give a combat skill that might delevel

Here are some suggestions:

Head / Shoulders / Buttocks:

Left Nipple:

• Killer Bee : A source of +1 famxp / combat from the left nipple slot that doesn't affect combat rate.

Right Nipple:

• Stab Bat : It gives +5 familiar weight, +1 fam experience per combat, +30% item drops, -combat, and +50% combat initiative. It's quite a lot of useful buffs in one.

Left / Right Foot:

Left / Right Hand:

• None of the punch skills are of high importance, so you can save these for last.

Don't Graft That / Think Twice

There are some familiars you probably don't want to graft to you or at least not immediately, since they might be more useful functioning as normal familiars.

Don't Graft:

• Chest Mimic : even though it has less experience to work with this path, you should still keep it around and try to lay some eggs with it.
• Patriotic Eagle : the zone buffs are powerful and flexible (with SGEEAs), and the other two skills help you find monsters to fight, which is very needed with the lack of normal skills.
• Peace Turkey : this might be one of your only sources of -combat, and the handful of split pea soup is always welcome.
• Any familiar you rely on for item drops, meat drops, or whatever else.

Think Twice

• Gelatinous Cubeling : At the very least get the items from the cubling first.
• Nosy Nose : It might be a source of pseudo-olfaction that you need.
• Reassembled Blackbird / Reconstituted Crow : Wait until you reach the Black Market.

Astral gear and consumables

• The astral belt is noteworthy due to less options for ML+ in this path - while the extra stats mean nothing, it will still help on a few quests where more ML speeds things up.
• Don't take the astral shirt for the extra stats, since you won't benefit from it. Also, you won't start with a torso slot in this path anyway.
• The astral mask is useful as usual for the item drop bonus.
• You can use whatever astral consumable you want.

IotM / IotY

• Sept-Ember Censer : In this path you should take a structural ember each day, since the Mmm-brr! brand mouthwash can't give stats in this path.
• closed-circuit pay phone : Free fights to gain famxp and maybe a few more with the shadow bricks
• server room key : Ten more free fights for famxp.
• cursed monkey's paw : In addition to the usual uses, you might have to wish for effects that the grafted intrinsic doesn't cover.

Rewards

• Finishing a run while it is the current special challenge path -- between February 15th, 2025 and May 14th, 2025 -- gives players 50 (in Normal) or 100 (in Hardcore) extra karma points the next time they visit Valhalla.
• Players will receive a Thwaitgold ??? statuette upon defeating the final boss.
• 11 familiar hatchlings
  • plover's egg

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