Z is for Zootomist
From A KoL Wiki
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.
Grafting
In your lab, you can graft familiars to your body parts if they have enough experience.
- The first time you graft something to your head, shoulders, or buttocks, you unlock an intrinsic that holds your passive buffs. Further grafts to these sections add to the intrinsic.
- The nipples hold two separate but similar sets of potentially powerful buffs that also might make you level up your familiars faster
- The left nipple gets combat+ in its buffs, while the right nipple gets combat- in its pool of buffs
- The feet give useful skills including olfaction, banishing, item loosening (pickpocket?), instant kills, and yellow rays. These skills seem to incur varying turns of Everything Looks (a color).
- The hands just give a combat skill that might deal elemental damage and might delevel.
The first familiar you graft must be a least level 3, then for the next level the familar needs to be at least level 4, and so on. Think of it as the familiars leveling up on your behalf.
Once grafted, familiars cannot be ungrafted and are unavailable for the rest of the path.
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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 Strategy
Here are some suggestions:
Head / Shoulders / Buttocks:
- Mechanical Songbird : the largest passive increase still available to players (so far), with a 35% meat drop bonus , along with +150% combat initiative and 30% meat drop bonus. The familiar is a bit expensive, though.
- Autonomous Disco Ball / Scary Death Orb : the second largest item drop boost at 25%.
- Smiling Rat / Jumpsuited Hound Dog / Z-Rex : the biggest passive meat drop bonus available (so far) at 65%, along with 15% item drop and 50% initiative.
- Exotic Parrot : +10 Prismatic Damage (might help for some quests), +45% meat, +15% item drop, and +100% combat initiative.
Left Nipple:
- Killer Bee / Oily Woim : 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 in 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 Cubeling 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, ML+ 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. If you can't level up quickly yet, the energy drinks can get you drinks earlier, while the pilsners are likely to be better for those with progression.
IotM / IotY
- Toy Cupid bow : more familiar experience, plus an extra chance pick up item drops.
- Apriling band helmet : the Apriling band piccolo is especially useful for leveling.
- 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 free kills with every shadow brick you get.
- Everfull Dart Holster : Free kills for more famxp, and some more item drop, meat drop, etc.
- cursed monkey's paw : In addition to the usual uses, you might have to wish for effects that the grafted intrinsic doesn't cover (DA or ML, for example), or use it to get more famxp.
- book of facts : Just the Facts isn't available
- server room key : The free fights aren't available due to being skill dependent
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
