This episode is sponsored by Brilliant. [TierZoo intro] [Television static] [Music] Show me your moves! [Music] Falcon Kick! [Music] [♪Faron Woods cover♪] If you play this game for a while, you'll eventually hear about some builds that seem really far-fetched and possibly overpowered. Builds that a lot of players will claim to have seen, but have no evidence to back it up. That's right, today we're talking about cryptids. Do they exist, and more importantly, where would they be on the tier list? If you unlock them as a playable class, would you even want to play as them? There are some where the answer is an obvious yes, and some that might be more hype than power, and there are some I've even managed to figure out how to unlock myself. So prepare for some never before shared secrets on these legendary builds. As always, we'll start from the bottom of the tier list and go up from there. So, in my opinion, the worst cryptids are the ones unlocked by taking a well-known build, and afflicting them with an appearance altering disease. One example of this is the chupacabra. I used to think that they'd be quite overpowered because of the lifelink ability until I figured out how to unlock them and saw how they really play. The legend goes that the chupacabra, aka goat sucker, can heal itself by draining the HP of its light victims. That's a load of nonsense. To unlock the chupacabra, what you need to do is choose a canine build on the character select screen, and then intentionally get yourself infected by mange. You can do this by simply being in close proximity with another player with the same debuff, as it spreads quickly. Mange has a few effects. The first is a massive sanity debuff brought about by intense itching. The second is a sizeable buff to intimidation as a result of hair loss from all the scratching. These two together unlock the chupacabra prestige class for the coyote. However, aside from becoming scarier, it doesn't grant any more unique abilities. In fact, I'd say the cost to your sanity greatly outweighs the intimidation bonus. The same can be said about the jackalope. The jackalope is touted as a rapid build equipped with antlers. Now, antlers are awesome tools, both for foraging and for defense. Their range allows you to pressure opponents from a distance, and their sharp prongs can inflict bonus damage on hit. Rabbits absolutely could benefit from having antlers, especially considering how impressive they'd be in the Raptor matchup. Unfortunately, that's not what's going on here. To play as a jackalope, You need to choose a rabbit build and then somehow acquire the Shope papilloma virus. The best way to do this is to be bitten on the face by a tick player. The virus creates protrusions that can resemble antlers, but, in reality, they're tumors. So while the aesthetics might seem fun for a while, they're cutting your playthrough short by a huge margin in most cases. Next are the builds which get a lot of hype and don't have a fatal flaw, but I still don't think are necessarily top tier. The first is what I like to call the "solo simian build," this is the general name for rumored hominid builds, like the Sasquatch, Bigfoot, Yeti, yowie, and Abominable Snowman. They seem to be everywhere and also nowhere. And I think there's a reason for that. Great ape builds have everything in common with these solo simians except for one thing: team play. Even though this fabled character seems to have the same, or possibly even higher base stats and abilities than the other apes, team play is what brought apes to the forefront of the meta. Forgoing that just seems like an objectively suboptimal play, and so I have to rate these guys lower than all the other simians. Also in this section is the Thunderbird. In my raptor tier list, I discussed the attributes that make for a strong aerial hunter, those being speed, agility, stealth, and power. Thunderbirds, being massive flying tanks, would not be suited to this playstyle at all. The largest playable flying birds are all scavenger types that use their large size to travel great distances easier. The largest raptor build ever to make waves in the meta was Haast's eagle, which managed to have a commanding lead in the New Zealand meta for a solid chunk of time. However, this build was by no means a Thunderbird. It was actually smaller than modern-day condor and albatross builds, and so, as intimidating as a cloud sized eagle would be, I don't think it would make for a very effective build Okay, so now that we've covered the bad and average cryptids, let's finally get into ones I think would actually be really strong. In fact, it's my personal opinion that these cryptids are actually players who somehow avoided the sweeping bans put in place by the devs. The first one is, of course, the Loch Ness Monster. Plesiosaurs used to hold the number one spot in the marine meta, way back during the Jurassic expansion. They were much quicker and more agile than fish at the time, and since the devs hadn't introduced marine mammals to the game yet, they were totally uncontested. If plesiosaurs were still playable today, they'd easily still be high tier. The tactic of using one's reach in order to attack a school of fish from afar is what made them so dominant in the past metas, and this strategy is still employed by builds like the swordfish and sawfish today. In fact, one of the main arguments against the existence of the Loch Ness Monster is that they're simply too strong for the Loch server. They'd easily overpower and defeat every other player there, and eventually just end up starving because they'd have driven away the competition. If something like this build is actually playable, it's much more likely that it's an open ocean exclusive, and judging by the recent finding of a mysterious creature washing up on Georgia's shore, this seems to be the case. The last cryptid on our tier list today is another potential banhammer dodger: The jungle dwelling reptile called Mokèlé-mbèmbé. Despite the fact that the devs removed sauropod builds from the game long ago, rumor has it that Mokèlé-mbèmbé is a secret playable character in the river biome of the Congo jungle. This is at least mildly plausible, because the vast stretches of thick rainforests and deep swamps have actually blocked human data miners from exploring the area. One reason I find this build to be more plausible than Nessie is that Mokèlé-mbèmbé is speculated to be using the pygmy character trait. This solves two problems at once: First, this gets around the problem I have with the Nessie build, in that they're so big and powerful that they'd annihilate all their competition and end up starving. A pygmy sauropod would still be powerful, but there would still be enough loot for itself and other herbivores in the area. This also helps explain how it avoided the ban, seeing as pygmy builds often survive much longer than their full-sized counterparts, as seen with the pygmy mammoth that survived on the Aleutian Island servers up until fairly recently. Now with that said I've still never had the opportunity to play as this fable character, or even see one in game, so if any of you know how to unlock it, please share that in the comments. With the possible exception of Sasquatch, none of these cryptids really have the intelligence stats required to keep up with the current meta. And this could be contributing to why some of them have faded into legend. Don't let this happen to you. By using the link in the description, you can level up your intelligence by actively solving science and math problems on brilliant.org. Brilliant shows you how some of the highest level scientists solve real problems: by breaking them down into smaller components, thinking clearly through each part, and recombining them to reach a conclusion. To support Tier Zoo and learn more about Brilliant, go to brilliant.org/TierZoo and sign up for free. And also, the first 200 people that go to that link will get 20% off their annual premium subscription. Thank you for watching, and see you next time.
April fools, r/TwoBestFriendsPlay !
0 mention of the MONGOLIAN DEATH WORM. The only cryptid who can simultaneously melt you with acid, electrify you, and poison you with its touch. Vote Mongolian Death Worm. It's got the touch.
Huh. Wasn't aware that Mokele Mbembe was a thing.
Yeah but what about Wendigos and the Jersey Devil TierZoo! What about them?! Jersey Devil has been ruling that playzone since like the 1700s!
Gonna take it on faith that this is actually about cryptids and not a cunning ploy to get people to accidentally watch the arachnid list...
TIL that jackelopes have a real world basis outside of a taxidermy trick. Neat.
Well done! Loved the intro with the yeti.
Alright, /u/Vibriofischeri, I gotta give you some flak here: The Chupacabra is my favorite cryptid: I'm not mad you placed it low, i'm mad you fell prey to the whole mangey dog meme, which has pretty much universally ruined everything cool and interesting about the Chupacabra
The original description for the chupacabra was pretty consistently not anything like what people describe in current sightings, it was described as a small (3-4 feet tall) to large (7-10 feet) biped, with "Grey" alien esque huge eyes, a series of large glowing color changing spines running down it's back, sometimes huge bat wings, large visible hangs, and a kangaroo, hopping gait.
What's so cool about that? Well, the cool part is that what it can allegedly do is fucking crazy. To begin with, sightings from the time were associated with UFO activity: People always spotted lights in the sky when it showed up, like it was some sort of Grey werewolf or some shit; and it was said to smell like sulfer. It's eyes were said to have a paralyzing effect, freezing people and livestock in place for it to feed. The craziest part is that it was fucking telepathic, communicating with humans in actual languages mentally.
Back in the mid 2000's, some dumbass clearly not familiar with the original sightings just saw a mangey Coyote, called it a Chupacabra, and now we are stuck with the lame, dumb canine version that permeates modern popular culture.
So I take it Drop Bears are real then? gg Aus, it was nice knowing you.