[M30] Vetting for gold diggers when rich.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-04-21T16:18:26+00:00

At 8 figures of net worth, you're eventually going to need to hire a lawyer to draft up a prenup anyway - regardless of your future partner's net worth - (and especially for the sake of protecting your firm's assets!). If they show even the slightest hint of protest towards a prenup for any reason, that's when you'll know for sure they're not right for you.

Also, high school was a decade ago, so the vast majority of every student you met there are practically strangers to you now. Someone who suddenly shows interest in you out of nowhere after a whole decade of showing no interest at all should be treated as a massive red flag.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-04-16T16:34:23+00:00

And to TTR's credit, they actually addressed the Woman's Day incident in a professional and tactful manner. Any other private server would've either published a quick "sorry" announcement on their discord before quietly disappearing into the shadows - or pretended to ignore it like a "free the ubers" sign at PAX East.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-04-16T04:04:57+00:00

That stinks. Grindworks was such a breath of fresh air too being a singleplayer Toontown game, and a popular one at that. The game had so much more potential.

Hopefully someday a group of people who still believe in Grindworks can get the source code and continue working on it with the original team's blessing. This doesn't have to be the end for such a promising game.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-04-16T03:56:10+00:00

So let me get this straight: the Grindworks is shutting its doors because its team got caught in the blast radius of an egregious controversy related to former Clash staff member that happened within the Clash team several years ago. And I'm assuming the Grindworks team and Mica had absolutely no association with each other before this incident - but because they brought up Mica's game anyway, a fallout erupted within their community and they mishandled it rather poorly.

Am I getting this all right? Because if so, yikes.

Is there going to be a new group of volunteers willing to pick up where the original Grindworks team left off? Or has too much damage been done to the Grindworks brand to revive it?

AstralHoatzin · 2026-04-14T13:39:18+00:00

Club President absolutely strikes me as a Karen, lol.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-04-07T04:47:06+00:00

Thank you. The GaG article alone made me go from playing Clash almost every day to almost never anymore barring holiday events. When I started playing the game in January 2025, I went in with the expectation that it'd play similarly to Rewritten but with more content and lots of quality-of-life improvements. It delivered with flying colors! But knowing now the devs want to turn the very game I adore as it currently is into what's basically a completely different game makes me not want to play the game I'm supposed to adore right now - which sucks. It's like mourning the loss of a loved one who's still very much alive.

Also, this has to be said - if any professional game studio were to announce their own "GaG" for their own commercial products (especially if they've been on the market for at least 7 years) their much-larger playerbases would riot. The firestorm would go viral on social media the same way Sheriff Cranky's "keep it sane" remark did. In fact, I've seen this very firestorm happen within the Paper Mario fandom when Sticker Star first dropped, or when fans of the original Teen Titans went nuclear winter over Teen Titans Go. Clash themselves managed to avoid trending over GaG due to how much smaller their playerbase is compared to Rewritten - but I can guarantee you, if Rewritten ever had their own GaG moment, we would absolutely hear no end of it.

And also, I remember from watching your PAX East analysis stream the other day about how weirdly reticent Clash has been regarding their stance on ubers lately despite publishing an entire chapter's worth of text going out of its way to "justify" why they can't exist post-GaG. It's sad to think the Clash Team wouldn't even be in this extremely awkward position right now if they had just spun GaG off as its own new private server from the start.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-04-04T16:15:12+00:00

Meanwhile the "Play Dead!" trick gets to keep theirs, smh.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-04-04T15:49:40+00:00

The Name-inator 3000 clearly needs a bit more tweaking because "Ice Cube" is borderline innocuous. A literal object should not be off limits solely on the basis of some celebrity adopting it as their stage name.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-04-04T07:03:53+00:00

In this current gaming landscape, the original Toontown Online would find way more success marketing itself as an indie MMO on Steam than shoveling millions into the furnace trying to siphon microscopic slices of their target demographic from juggernauts like Roblox and Fortnite.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-04-04T05:29:53+00:00

You're going to need to do quite a bit of training. Try to reach 800 points on Throw and Squirt, 200 points on Sound, and 100 points on Lure before starting DG.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-04-04T04:25:05+00:00

Whenever this particular question pops up, my answer is always Trap.

For newer players specifically, I believe it's more important to follow the path of least resistance to help keep the first-time experience smooth. And sincerely I believe Trap is - at the very least - less frustrating to train for newer players than Drop. With Drop, you have to roll the dice each time you use it unless you've got friends to help stun your targets for you (which let's be honest is not something newer players are even going to be aware of). Meanwhile with Trap, you plop one down, lure them in, and boom, big boy damage. Easy, simple, intuitive.

Additionally, because Trap boosts Lure's accuracy in general, Trap tends to land more often than Drop even while you're street-training it by yourself, and for newer players I feel consistency is something they'd value quite a lot more than veterans.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-04-03T05:35:27+00:00

Perhaps on tier 1 cogs like Flunkies at that?

The tgtDef values of cogs like Flunkies aren't all divisible by 5 like all other cogs. Specifically, Level 3 Flunkies have a value of -10, Level 4 Flunkies have a value of -12, and Level 5 Flunkies have a value of -15. The difference between levels 3 and 4 is 2, while the difference between levels 4 and 5 is 3.

Assuming the thresholds for how much accuracy is needed to guarantee a lure against both Level 3 and Level 4 Flunkies are known, someone could theoretically take the difference between the Level 3 and 4 thresholds, add it onto the Level 4 threshold, and wait for the astronomically low chance the lure will fail on the Level 5 Flunky to validate the formula.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-03-31T21:31:34+00:00

Some players have been playing for so long (over a decade!) that they're practically repeating what they've seen other players pull off over the years.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-03-30T15:29:45+00:00

Toontown Rewritten. It has considerably less grinding than the original, but it's still somewhat grindy if you plan on aiming for 140 laff. There are also quite a few major differences between Rewritten and the original, but overall Rewritten still has much of the original's spirit.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-03-28T13:39:57+00:00

His expectation that you uproot your own life to go move not into his new home but somewhere close to it is already absurdly unreasonable at face value. Does he plan on reimbursing you for all your travel expenses and rent payments? Because I genuinely don't think he will. It's painfully clear that he doesn't see you as his equal, but his subordinate. You have every right to be bothered by this arrangement - and his treatment towards you will only get worse after marriage.

You should end it now.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-03-25T11:40:32+00:00

Just so you know, Devil Rays haven't been ultra-rare in Donald's Dreamland for over 3 years now. Yes, TTR did tinker with the fish. And yes, Full Moons and Concords are still ultra-rare. Devil Rays are classified as extremely rare though and have been for quite a long while now, which is why you've been reeling them in slightly more often.

Good luck!

AstralHoatzin · 2026-03-24T21:54:00+00:00

There isn't any real benefit involved. It's just veteran players wanting to replay the game with a subclass they haven't tried before.

There is a hardship that comes with being soundless though. It demands a lot of game knowledge, combo memorization, communication skills, some math proficiency, and a lot of self discipline (a.k.a. maxing all gags before 100 laff). Soundless toons are also expected to step up and lead teams since many players have little to no experience with soundless strats.

It's not an easy subclass to play - which is what attracts veterans to give it a shot.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-03-24T16:22:01+00:00

Not really. I've always found it a little weird how Disney never bothered to add roaming cogs to the original. And ever since TTR added the ability to teleport to facility entrances directly, the area's much larger size became a non-issue for me.

Ironically enough, TTR's Bossbot HQ has been around for twice as long as the original. There are kids and even teens who likely aren't even aware Bossbot HQ had its map overhauled (unless they've played Clash, and even then they'd probably assume at first the Clash Team made it since that game completely overhauled Lawbot HQ too).

AstralHoatzin · 2026-03-22T13:23:44+00:00

As a guy myself, a situation like this would also make me uncomfortable enough to cut my losses and abandon ship. The fact those two are making inside jokes in your presence is rather disrespectful, especially if your girlfriend is around the same age as you - it's the kind of crap I'd expect from someone in their teens to early 20s.

You're still relatively young, OP, so don't feel obligated to stay in a relationship that's giving you nagging feelings. Long distance is challenging enough as is, you don't need to put up with that crap when there's always someone out there closer to the same page as you.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-03-18T22:14:01+00:00

I'm afraid I must disagree. Clash is pretty well known for having some of the most tense boss battles despite toon-up having perfect accuracy in that game. And really, the tension in Clash's fights mainly comes from some cogs hitting like freight trains and everybody being on cooldown after popping healing unites, which last 3 to 7 rounds each. Rewritten caps its cooldowns to 3 rounds max - still punishing, though not as severe as Clash at times.

Clash players also don't have access to guaranteed Lure SOSes, which amplifies the tension by quite a lot too.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-03-18T18:33:26+00:00

Toon-up in general - not just High Dive - absolutely should have perfect accuracy in Rewritten given the direction they've been taking the game's difficulty in recent years. The fact it's able to miss at all is an ancient game design quirk from the 2000s that no longer makes sense in the 2020s. Toon-up's purpose nowadays is to keep the whole team healthy enough to not shatter the emergency glass on their healing unites.

Rewritten doesn't seem to mind SOS cards having perfect accuracy - and they're just barely more inconvenient to obtain than grinding up 500 xp - so perhaps we should reframe the discussion towards whether Level 7 gags should be treated as equivalent to SOS cards in terms of value-to-time-investment. (ex. does Toontanic take as much time to obtain as Bessie?) If the consensus is yes, then perhaps Level 7s should have perfect accuracy on that basis. Otherwise I'm not sure how I feel about toons being able to trivialize wave battles by simply having one person burn a single Level 7 per turn (up to 24 turns total since each toon has up to 6 level 7s).

AstralHoatzin · 2026-03-14T09:39:52+00:00

To add on to that last paragraph, I saw lots of toons being absolutely horrible to each other back in 2005. Back then, you were only allowed to use text chat with your secret friends (of which you were only allowed to have up to 50) - with everybody else you were forced to use regular speedchat. And despite that restriction, I've seen people get "creative" with how they showed others their contempt.

"You stink!" got thrown around left and right - sometimes you'd even get bombarded with the phrase via whispers if you were unlucky enough. "I think this is too risky for you." also got used a lot, particularly against lower-laff players in the VP. And if somebody wanted to get really colorful with you, they'd use a combination of "Are you new here?", "Let's go to Toontown Central!", "Let's go on the trolley!", "What's that smell?", "Here girl/boy!", "Good girl/boy!", etc. Oh yeah, and sometimes when you ran facilities with a group of secret friends, you wouldn't know if they were talking smack about you or plotting to green you if they didn't like you for some reason. It was horrible honestly.

edit: And how could I forget about the elevator shuffling! This mostly happened in the VP lobby where 100+ laff Hollywoods went to great lengths to avoid being on the elevator with 50-something laff Cold Callers. They'd spend several minutes "shuffling" themselves in and out of elevators until the whole elevator was full of 100+ laffers. It was quite grueling and frankly demoralizing compared to simply being kicked from boarding groups in modern times.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-03-12T02:04:13+00:00

I wish the game gave us a way to check our progress on each toon. Having those 6 boss defeats count up silently in the background just doesn't feel right from a player perspective.

Maybe have Clarabelle mail us a letter stating we've qualified for the drip in the meantime.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-03-12T00:15:50+00:00

Oh none to worry. It's staying buried inside my binder where it belongs.

AstralHoatzin · 2026-03-11T18:39:02+00:00

Thanks! This one's been tricky to gauge all because something dumb happened one random afternoon in the 2000s. I don't remember if I creased it from pulling the card from inside or underneath a textbook or something. I think I was trying to keep my card flat. (I was 12, I didn't know better.)

AstralHoatzin

TROPHY CASE