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Legendary Seal-Clubbing Club: Overview

2026-01-04 // IOTM Overview

This month's IOTM comes to us from an alternate universe. In this cursed timeline, the powers that be sell loot boxes for IOTMs, with but a scant chance of an overpowered top-tier IOTM with every loot box you open. The horror! Luckily for us, our TPTB hew to a more "money can be exchanged for goods" sort of vibe rather than a "money can be exchanged for mostly bad things, with the theory of possibly getting a good thing keeping you coming back for more" sort of vibe. That's good for us, because the second one is both a rancid vibe and also... like... a really complicated vibe? There's just a lot going on there. Let's just get clubbing with the January IOTM.

General Summary

The legendary seal-clubbing club (or the LSCC) is a 1-handed weapon that is auto-pulled at the start of each run. It is styled with orange text and a black background, which is why I did that weird formatting above. (I am not going to do it this whole article, because that would be annoying.) The club comes with the following out-of-box bluetext:

  • Muscle +50%
  • Weapon Damage +10 x Level
  • Combat Initiative +50%
  • Always Hits
  • Use Three Club Techniques
  • Increase Fury Capacity & Generation (Seal Clubbers Only)

The three club techniques are the following three new skills:

  1. Club 'Em Across the Battlefield -- Instantly kills your opponent, chaining you into a free NC where you choose a monster from your most recently adventured zone. Once chosen, you're given a shot at rolling that monster's items with your current buffed item drop rate.
  2. Club 'Em Into Next Week -- Instantly kills your opponent, creating a wandering copy of the monster that will pop up to fight you seven turns from the cast.
  3. Club 'Em Back in Time -- Instantly kills most opponents, making the current fight free at the expense of destroying their meat and items. If the monster cannot be insta-killed (like a boss monster), deals 30% of their max HP and makes the fight free. (If you lose the fight, it still takes an adventure, so... try to win!)

All of these skills are limited to five casts per day apiece. For the sake of memorability, I am going to call these three skills: club across, club next, club back. It'll be easier this way.

Speedrun Applicability

Let's start with the club's equipment bonuses. These aren't terrible! 50% muscle is actually a pretty nice boost, especially for offstat tower tests, and will be a nice boon for muscle classes when fighting Some Fish from the Monodent of the Sea. The weapon damage combined with the "always hit" modification will be our combat trivializer du jour; something we don't always need, but will be nice for lower shiny folks. The initiative is better than other options in the weapon slot, too.

The fury capacity and generation is also nice, if not always meaningful. It will be nice for making sure Batter Up is always available when you're running as a seal clubber in hardcore, which is good. More interestingly, it has nice synergy with the moss mace, the reward for running as a Seal Clubber in 2024 Standard Normal. The mace lets you turn 3 fury into a pickpocket attempt; with both the club and the mace, you could pickpocket (almost) every turn, which is neat. Granted, it's something you need to pull, but there may be a few very niche situations where this is better than your most marginal pull. It's at least something to think about, which is neat.

Having covered the not so meaningful bonuses, let's move on to the meat of the matter: the three clubbing skills. They are all really nice, in different ways.

Club Back is the most simple, allowing you to freekill the monster you are currently fighting. The fact that it destroys the monster's items is a bummer, but this is still just a flat 5 turns saved. You could argue it's even a bit more, actually -- this is the rare freekill that can be used to coerce boss fights and otherwise non-freekillable monsters into free fights. This makes it fundamentally more powerful than most freekills, which makes it -extra- nice for unrestricted speedruns where you are spoiled for choice with the bazillion available freekill options.

Club Next is the second most simple, giving you five wanderers a day that you can place in a delay zone. That's a flat 5 turns saved! The easiest way to use this is to turn monsters that you must fight outside of delay into monsters you can fight within delay, saving you a turn you would've spent adventuring in the delay. That's pretty great!

Club Across? Well. That one's a bit more complicated -- enough so that I'll give it a section of its own.

Clubbing Across the Battlefield for Fun and Profit

Club Across is the most interesting of the skills, as it introduces a brand new mechanic. The mechanic is, to me, different but not entirely dissimilar to the way the Fourth of May Cosplay Saber's "Using the Force" noncombat works. For those who aren't aware, you cast "Use the Force, %playername!" as a combat skill on a monster, which ends the combat abruptly and gives you a free noncombat choice between a banish of the monster, three copies of the monster, and acquiring the monster's drops. Club Across differs from Using the Force in two ways:

  • First, the combat you are currently in does resolve. When you use the force, it just becomes a wonky unfinished combat (which allows you to do weird things like sneak Meteor Showered out of the combat). When you Club Across, you instakill the monster prior to the free NC, resolving the current combat and letting you get whatever you normally would in it.
  • Second, you aren't limited to the current monster. You get a choice between every monster in whatever zone currently shows up in the "Last Adventure" link on the left-side character pane.
  • Third, the force drops feature of Use the Force is... well, forced. Club Across is notable in that it is merely a -roll- for the monster's drops, not a force of the monster's drops. This means that if, say, you were to Club Across for a spiny sklelton, and you wanted to guarantee the roll, you would need to have 400% item drop when selecting your choice.

All of that makes it extremely distinct from Use the Force. That's how unique it is -- it's kind of fun that the closest thing to Club Across is still so distinct!

There is one big trick involved in Club Across that bears special mention. If you are fighting a monster that does not have a zone, you can club across into whatever zone you most recently adventured in. Examples of zoneless monsters include:

  • Seal figurines, if you're a Seal Clubber
  • Lynyrds, fought from lynyrd snares
  • The daily free eldritch tentacle in the forest village
  • The [glitch season reward name] monster
  • Chest Mimic eggs

This means that you can do some fun stuff. My favorite fun concept -- use the Peridot of Peril's free monster selection choice adventure to change your most recently visited zone, then use some of these zoneless monsters to keep rolling for items from whichever zone you visited. This is quite cool and jazzy. In niche situations, it should allow you to essentially summon up weird items from zones we don't often visit if there are good reasons to grab them -- like Damage Absorption gear for 8-Bit in an avatar path, or a hat/pants option with a variant power to get a special Prismatic Beret busk.

Outside of niche situations like that, there are some obviously powerful targets for Club Across that are worth noting. I've come up with nine of them. As is my custom, I will rate them with club emojis -- ♣️♣️♣️ represents a fantastic use, ♣️♣️ a solid use, and ♣️ a niche use.

  • SONOFA BEACH -- Lobsterfrogman (♣️♣️♣️) Since the only thing we care about LFMs for is snagging 5 of a 100% drop, this is trivially and obviously good -- no issues capping it, and grabbing gunpowder often requires a copy and an adventure. Saves an adventure -plus- a copy, which is great! You probably would rather do the zoneless trick, though using your Peridot to get one LFM naturally is also fine. (Requires no extra item drop to cap.)
  • THE HIDDEN BOWLING ALLEY -- Pygmy Bowlers (♣️♣️♣️) Similar to LFMs, the only reason we care to encounter a bowler is to grab an item. Using Club Across saves you a fight spent grabbing the bowler. Helpfully, we often spend more than a turn or two in the bowling alley, too, so you don't even really need to do a bunch of zoneless stuff to benefit from this one. (Requires 150% item drop to cap.)
  • OUTSKIRTS OF CAMP LOGGING CAMP -- Forest Spirit (♣️♣️♣️) If you're in a sign with Canadia access, you have the Peridot, and you have zoneless fights left to smuggle a Club Across in on, this one is really good. Getting forest tears without spending a turn from chaining a forest spirit into a zoneless fight allows you to craft a muculent machete, which saves you 7 turns in the Hidden Park. Great use of resources! (Requires 234% item drop to cap.)
  • THE DEFILED NOOK -- evil eye skeletons (♣️♣️) Pretty straightforward. This is a bit less good than it might initially seem, since you don't get the 1 evil from actually killing the monster. Still, I could easily see a case where you save a turn from getting exactly 1 extra evil eye, and in cases like that, this is a solid use. (Requires 400% item drop to cap.)
  • THE OASIS -- drum machine (♣️♣️) There may be a case where you prefer to use refraction here, but Club Across is another good way to go. Now that we have lost the Book of Facts, we actually need to get ultrahydrated again, which means that whether or not you have a Peridot you will probably still need to spend a turn or two getting ultrahydrated at the Oasis. Use a zoneless free fight and get a free drum machine, to use your worm-riding pages! (Requires 234% item drop to cap.)
  • TWIN PEAK -- hedge trimmer monster (♣️♣️) This actually synergizes incredibly well with the Blood Cubic Zirconia's refraction skill; if you refract the entire zone into one non-trimmer-monster fight, you get three hedge trimmers. Club Across lets you get a fourth from that same combat. Only reason it's not three clubs is that Twin Peak is a reasonably easy zone to roll the noncombat in, so you don't necessarily -need- all four trimmers -- you probably will get one naturally. But if needed, it's great! Also, takes a pretty high item drop %. Pretty doable, but high. (Requires 567% item drop to cap.)
  • THE HIDDEN TEMPLE -- baa-relief sheep (♣️) It's pretty easy to just spend a clover and fight Baa'baa for the three stone wool we want in modern standard. But if you're feeling a lot of clover pressure, you could do one stone sheep, one bat wing swoop, and one Club Across for three stone wool. (Requires 300% item drop to cap.)
  • COBB'S KNOB HAREM -- harem girl or knob madame (♣️) I think most runners would prefer to use a refract or a Peridot here. But if you for whatever reason don't want to, or you're missing BCZ/Peridot, you could also use Club Across to snag your harem girl gear. (Requires 400% item drop to cap.)
  • THE HAUNTED LIBRARY -- banshee librarian (♣️) This one is a bit tough to snag naturally, and does require a pretty high item drop to guarantee -- likely higher than we can comfortably reach in Standard. That means it may take 2-3 Club Across uses to get it, which isn't ideal, and is why this is relatively low on the list. It still is nice, though, as it is a Club Across pick that may benefit from being held off until later in the run. You don't always know how many turns the banshee's killing jar will actually save in the desert until you've found your worm-riding manual -- sometimes it saves 1 turn, sometimes it saves 4-5. In cases where it saves that much, this is a powerful use of Club Across that definitely belongs in your back pocket! (Requires 900% item drop to cap.)

2025 In-Standard Synergies

  • Club Next has awesome synergy with the Roman Candelabra (2024). Once you've dragged a wanderer like a war hippy or a cyrpt monster or some random free fight into a delay zone, you can use purple candles to copy the wandering monster and burn another turn of delay. Same goes for the phosphor traces spleen item from the Leprecondo (2025). Combine that all, and you can turn the 5 wanderers from the club into 5-10 extra turns of burned delay a day!
  • As noted in the Club Across section, there's huge synergy between Club Across and any zoneless fights you have available, with a special emphasis on Chest Mimic (2024) eggs. In unrestricted, there are a ton more of note; the combat lover's locket, the burning leaf fights, pocket wish fights, bricko monsters, and witchess fights. Also, big synergy with the Peridot of Peril (2025).

Overall Rating

We'd rate the legendary seal-clubbing club a tier 0 IOTM. Look, let's not beat around the bush here -- every one of these skills is an absolute banger. Five free kills, five free in-delay wanderers, and five cool extra item rolls? That's all awesome! You could argue the free wanderers are worth a bit more simply by greatly enhancing the power of purple candle copies and phosphor trace copies, and the club across uses are wide and varied and extremely powerful. It's a truly legendary item. Thank goodness it fell into our dimension!

One quick programming note -- yes, I know that the Eternal Codpiece came out a few days ago as well. I'm holding off on the Codpiece analysis for a few days, mostly owing to the fact that it sounds like the /dev team are going to ask TPTB to consider adding few gem options the team might have missed. I greatly doubt anything will substantively change my analysis, but I'll wait a few days. You know. Just in case the Heart of the Volcano ends up adding, I dunno, seventeen thousand pickpocket percent or something. You never know, man!

Article contributed by Captain Scotch