Participation Award Trinket Guide

Appearance

The Participation Award icon appears as a ribbon badge with a golden medallion in the center engraved with a picture of an ammonite shell. The two hanging ribbons are light brown while their ends are dark brown, matching Shelly's dress colors. The medallion is surrounded by a white, petal-like trim.

Description

Participation Award is a Main-tier Skill Check trinket associated with Twisted Shelly. The 25% increase to Skill Check Chance doubles the base rate from 25% to 50%, meaning the player will encounter Skill Checks on roughly half of all Machine extractions rather than one in four. Each successful Skill Check grants bonus completion, so more frequent checks translate directly into faster overall extraction when hit consistently. The 10% reduction to Skill Check Size means each individual check window becomes narrower, raising the difficulty of landing hits. For a 1-Star Skill Check Toon with a base size of 50, the window drops to 45. For a 5-Star Toon with a base size of 250, it drops to 225. It is categorized as a Skill Check trinket and sits alongside Magnifying Glass as one of the more demanding check-focused options.

Strategies

Participation Award is most commonly paired with Magnifying Glass as the primary Skill Check-based loadout. Together they maximize both Skill Check frequency and bonus completion per hit, but the combined size reduction reaches 39.7%, which makes the check window extremely tight. Characters with high Skill Check Value like Shelly or Gigi benefit most from this stack because their larger base window absorbs the penalty more comfortably.

Generally, Magnifying Glass alone outclasses Participation Award. Magnifying Glass is on average 0.84 to 8.24 seconds faster per Machine depending on the Toon's stats, without the Tech Savvy buff. Since Toons are more vulnerable during a Skill Check, Participation Award also carries a higher risk of leaving players stuck on Machines at inconvenient times. However, Participation Award can outperform Magnifying Glass on Toons with 5-Star Skill Check because the higher frequency of checks can occasionally overtake the per-check value advantage of Magnifying Glass.

If you only intend on running one Skill Check trinket, Magnifying Glass is usually the better standalone choice. Vee's Remote is another alternative that avoids size penalties entirely.

Best Pairings

Stress Ball synergizes perfectly with Participation Award. Stress Ball grants a stackable 5% Extraction Speed increase per successful Skill Check, and Participation Award doubles the frequency of those checks. This combination is especially useful for Toons with already high Skill Check or high Extraction Speed, and can also help slower-extracting Toons speed up if the player can handle smaller windows.

Thinking Cap is a defensive pairing that increases the Skill Check window by 40 units, offsetting the size penalty from Participation Award before stacking further bonuses. This combination suits players who want more frequent checks without the punishing difficulty increase.

Blue Bandana can mildly mitigate some of the downsides. Blue Bandana reduces Skill Check Chance by 5%, so the net effect is a 20% Chance increase with only a 10% Size decrease. However, this is generally not recommended because the two trinkets partially counteract each other.

Paint Bucket is an alternative for Toons with small Skill Check windows — including Shrimpo, Bassie, Blot, and Cosmo — where the size penalty from Participation Award would make checks nearly impossible to hit.

Best Users

Toons with Skill Check higher than their Extraction Speed benefit most from Participation Award. Shelly is the most natural fit given that Participation Award comes from her Twisted research and her 5-Star Skill Check stat provides a large enough base window to handle the size reduction.

Participation Award is not recommended for Toons with low Skill Check stats unless paired with Thinking Cap. For practice purposes, Magnifying Glass can be paired with Participation Award on a 1-Star Skill Check Toon to train small Skill Checks. Bassie is the best candidate for this due to her low Extraction Speed stat giving more practice time and her high survivability. Blot is also a good choice with equally slow Extraction Speed and similar survivability.

Trivia

Participation Award has several notable details about its mechanics and interactions.

• Since Participation Award increases Skill Check Chance by 25%, the total Skill Check Chance goes from the base 25% up to 50%.
• Using Participation Award with Magnifying Glass while playing Cosmo, Shrimpo, Blot, or Bassie creates the smallest consistent Skill Check size possible, with a combined 39.7% decrease bringing the size down to 30.15.
• When afflicted with Illness III on top of both trinkets, the Skill Check size drops further to 15.075. This is not possible with Blot due to his Illness immunity.
• The Skill Check Size lost from this trinket alone at each star level is: 1-Star (50 to 45), 2-Star (100 to 90), 3-Star (150 to 135), 4-Star (200 to 180), 5-Star (250 to 225).
• Prior to an unknown update, this trinket directly decreased the Skill Check size rather than adding -10% to the Skill Check size Multiplier, a trait shared with the Illness debuff.
• Participation Award was added on July 12, 2024, alongside Diary, Fancy Purse, Feather Duster, Pop Pack, and Pull Toy.
• Base-game Main Trinkets are mostly in the same category as their respective Main Character's 5-Star stat. Shelly's 5-Star stat is Skill Check, consistent with Participation Award being a Skill Check trinket.

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