Which bits of the comic do people enjoy the most?

[Mad Humanist]

I get the impression a lot of people really look forward to the fight scenes. I definitely enjoy bits of them but they drag a little for me eventually. And I totally dread what is coming next if that is a cleric versus Xykon fight scene.

But personally I much prefer the characters talking to each other and the surprises.

[LordSith]

I have no real affect for "battle scenes". What I realize re-reading OOTs (books mainly) is that I like the whole. I do not very much like the "one post at a time" because like I do for tv series, anime or whatever, i like to read it from a to z in a short time period.

For "bits" i liked most... i can see:
- the godsmooth art. It felt incredible
- the jokes in the first dungeon (up a level, down a level... i can't stop laughing)
- i liked very much the bits with Miyo and her "paladin played badly" rp.
- the Belkar+Haley travel in don't split the party
- a lot of the MITD moments

[Mightymosy]

The hotel arc, because it is the epitome of all that is good and well about the OotS
Gold piece of comedy.

[KorvinStarmast]

Which bits of the comic do people enjoy the most?
The jokes. If it weren't for the jokes, I'd not have waded through the first book. And I still like the jokes, the most recent one that I really liked being the digression by Redcloak and Durkon about relationships with their gods. (Also, without the comic relief aspect Belkar would have just been annoying before Rich finally got around to making him a more than one dimensional character 600 strips into the story)

There was one comic that I absolutely loved that was not jokes - I have a brother who is six years younger than me - it's where Roy gets to meet his (deceased) younger brother in the afterlife.
And almost as good was Durkon's 'reveal' of all of his memories to Durkula.

But mostly, it's the jokes.

[Jason]

The jokes.
The character development.
The twist and turns of the plot.
The mystery of what's really going on with the Snarl and what can be done to save the world.
The awesome moments.
The horrific moments.
The fact that all of this comes packaged in a distinctive stick-figure art style.

[Ionathus]

In the big picture, I love the sense of narrative.

Things just work from a storytelling perspective, and always seem to have a satisfying setup and payoff. Belkar's transformation for example -- looking back to how annoying he was at the start, and how the Shojo Hallucination pushed him to grow, was thrilling to read. And Durkon's backstory in particular really captivated me, in how we get to see all his memories and upbringing throughout the last Book, then his entire dwarf family shows up at the very end to have a Big Damn Heroes moment where they're actively defying Hel. In fact, that's why I love Utterly Dwarfed so much: the narrative is so well-crafted and carries me through as the story builds.

In the minutiae, I'm an absolute sucker for two plots unfolding in alternating panels (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1128.html). I know it's a convention in comics (I remember really liking it in Watchmen), but when Rich does it, I just get chills. The pacing was exquisite in this scene.

[knag]

I got hooked on the D&D-related humor, stayed for the self-aware meta narrative. Kinda miss that D&D humor is no longer front and center, but it's also been fun watching the artist grow and change what this comic is about. Unlike some other media I enjoy, I actually have a lot of confidence that the story being told here will come to an interesting conclusion.

[Schroeswald]

Can I answer all bits? I love all the bits of the comic

[Fincher]

I enjoy the story, the adventure, the action, and the D&D meta, but yeah, for me it's about the comedy more than anything.

[dancrilis]

I like Xykon the most to be honest.
This might be because I like evil humour.

This (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0376.html), this (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0416.html) and this (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0448.html) are just kindof hilarious to me, and Xykon is great at that (kindof a pity Redcloak lost it but I guess character development was needed).

As a strip however I think Crushed (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0827.html) might be my favourite despite not featuring the Lich himself and no real evil humour in place - just because of how appropriate the title was.

[Synesthesy]

I just want to know how it will end and why Belkar won't die

And I like the jokes too.

[Grey Watcher]

I don't know if there's a single thing I enjoy the most.

The fight scenes are pretty exciting, though they're not necessarily the highlight. I will say that I think Rich does fight scenes better than a lot of authors because he has a strong sense of keeping the narrative elements in play. Like how Elan's continued defiance of his father (and said father's attempts to assert authority) keep going throughout the fight scene. Or how the Crystal Golem fight climaxes not with Haley pulling off some clever combat maneuver, but by some brutal honesty helping to resolve a long-standing character flaw.

Even within more self-contained fights (eg V vs. Laurin), he's still pretty good about making sure there's an emotional layer (Laurin's apparent resentment of Elves, which is doubles as a nice bit of world-building) as well as spicing it up with good visuals.

I think, also, he knows when to end a fight. V vs. Laurin it lasts two strips. Even ones that go on longer have a good reason. Durkon is too determined to see a project through and Minrah too belligerent to retreat when they should've and now they're facing the consequences.

Now, all that said, the battles aren't my favorite parts per se. Some of my favorite things in no particular order:

-Gags and one-liners. Rich had a knack for giving his characters memorable moments without them feeling forced. "Big faces are getting big maces!" or "No I don't [have complicated feelings about Durkon]! And maybe if I stab something enough, they'll go away!" or even the "Nale nail Not-Nale" monologue are just so good. And there are plenty of similarly great visuals.
-Characters doing impressive things. Haley forcing Tarquin to let go of the ship's hull by shooting at his eyes and forcing him to use both hands for arrow catching (all with a broken arm). Vaarsuvius coming in at just the right moment to bail out the Order from Tarquin's army. Almost everything O-Chul has ever done.
-The surprising amount of pathos that can be brought forth by silly stick figures. Durkon's death or Roy finally returning from the grave.
-The plot and world building. It's good stuff and I'm eager to learn new things about both.
-A wide array of characters and motivations. A lot of works fall into a sort of dominant thing. Whether you have by-definition righteous heroes and vile villains or you have "everyone's cynically working towards their own ends" or it's all idealistic motives with questionable methods, a lot of works settle in a world-view and most characters conform to it, with a few outliers who exist to be proven wrong. OOTS feels so vibrant and alive in part because an ends-justify-the-means villain like Redcloak can exist beside a Evil-for-the-Fun-of-It villain like Xykon and neither feels out of place, and neither do other villains who range from well-intentioned extremists (Miko) to I Know My Place, You Learn Yours types like Tarquin.

That's just a few things why OOTS is perhaps the thing I've been a fan of the longest and most consistently in my 38 years of living.

[Dr.Zero]

At the start the jokes.
Lately the jokes have lost a bit of a punch for me.
So I'm interested in strips revealing the plot and its twists, where "something happens".
Battles, per se, are not incredibly interesting, aside this one, because it has a lost of twists (but not stupid ones: that Oona and Xykon could intervene was obvious) and death beckons in every strip.

[The Pilgrim]

The bits I enjoy the most are those from DCF. Their pages have aged well, and the ink gives them a very pleasant bouquet. I only seve it on special occasions, of course. I have performed a few tastings of NCftPB and it's aging well, too.

Sadly, in the latter releases both the ink and the paper are from a different supplier, and the precise mixture of old editions has been lost.

[Vulsutyr]

The DnD jokes, which of course have become increasingly rare over the years
The massive scale or emotional art like with Thor on the Astral Plane and "take 'em all" scene with Durkon and Greg
The story--I love this plot and these characters

[understatement]

I like how grounded most of the characters are, despite having a D&D-scaled world; their emotions, flaws, and dialogue feel believable, and sometimes relatable, despite shrugging off T-Rex attacks or surviving point-blank explosions. I also enjoy how the major characters bring their own type of humor to the table, from deadpan (Roy, Haley, V, Durkon, Redcloak) to zany (Elan, Belkar, Xykon, MiTD) and all the ones in between. The range of heroic and villainous characters keep the narrative sharp as well.

In the beginning, I liked how simple and straightforward the art and panel layouts were -- it was a bit like reading a book, so it was easier to focus on the characters instead of things going on in the background.

[tawnyterror]

I like when everyone has breakfast together and V is eating a single grapefruit with a little grapefruit spoon.

[Edea]

My favorite parts involved conflict with the Linear Guild.

For some reason Team Evil doesn't do it for me as much as the LG. It's probably this expectation of "whatever Xykon and Co. do, they will keep succeeding in short or long measures until it's time for the story to end," whereas the Linear Guild was free to royally screw up and enable hi-jinks since they were not the main villains.

[Metastachydium]

My favorite parts involved conflict with the Linear Guild.

For some reason Team Evil doesn't do it for me as much as the LG. It's probably this expectation of "whatever Xykon and Co. do, they will keep succeeding in short or long measures until it's time for the story to end," whereas the Linear Guild was free to royally screw up and enable hi-jinks since they were not the main villains.

(I've always felt kind of sorry for the Linears. Sabine, Z and Thog are fairly strong on their own right, and even Nale has his moments. The Cliffport murder spree, the jailbreak in Azure City and Malack's death are proof enough that they could be surprisingly good at what they do if only they knew their weight class. Which they really-really don't.)

[oonker]

For me are two things: the emotional moments and the twists.

"TAKE EM ALL", "I dinnae let go", "Wanna play blocks", "You're not Durkon at all" are on my top10 best emotional climaxes ever, in any media, be it movies, games, books, series, you name it. It's incredibly satisfying to read and to see those parts of the story unfold. I try to bring more people to read OotS just to see their reaction when they get to those parts.

And the second thing I enjoy the most are the twists, like this one (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0448.html). I remember being so utterly pissed because the paladins were wiped in a single strip, and the revelation that they were actually there as reinforcements was extremely well crafted.

[Mad Humanist]

I really appreciate everyone's replies. The thread is a bit of a slow burn, but I do appreciate those who have replied.

[RatElemental]

My favorite bits were probably the cutaways to team evil when they were still running Gobbotopia. This is probably due to them being one of the first parts of the comic I ever read, thanks to a link on TVTropes.

Other than that I really like any time V or Belkar's redemption arcs come up (even if I expect one of the two to be cut short).

Finally, the bits where how the world, gods, magic, whatever is explained how it works. I know Rich is not big on world building, but I live and breathe that kind of thing.

[137beth]

Meta-humor and character development are what I usually think are my two favorite things to read.

[Edea]

I'm also digging the art upgrade of the more recent strips, especially Redcloak (LOVE the claw-boots).

[Kazyan]

There's a lot about OOTS that 'just works', but the most impressive to me is how there, like, 12 complicated plot threads at any given time, all of which are woven together in a way that makes perfect sense and always gets tied into some satisfying little climax-bow. Everything is either a funny joke or has a crosslinked reason behind it, even if it's as simple as Xykon's preference for crystal balls.

[b_jonas]

The parts that I enjoy the most are two specific story arcs. One is Vaarsuvius's ill-fated bargain with the fiends, which leads to the ESCAPE (#623 (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0623.html) to #667, plus throw in #677 to #679). The other is Elan saving Haley from Nale (#367 then #387 (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0387.html) to #402).