Advanced Hardcore

From TheKolWiki

Information or advice on this page may be out-of-date due to NS13. All advice stemming from the superiority of the Gallery is now suspect.

The many other Hardcore Strategy pages here have been put together with a definite slant: to help new players accumulate skills as quickly as possible. Because of that, there are several recommendations made that don't match how serious players approach the game. This page is all about doing Hardcore speed runs as optimally as possible, and provides a slightly different slant. One way to view progress as a Hardcore player is to look at the fastest possible way through the game, and to adjust one's skill acquisition to best fit that path. That's the topic here.

The One True Path

When Ascension first was introduced to the game, the basic parameters of optimal speed runs were pretty clear. Barring food, drink, and quest requirements, if you were less than level 8, you wanted to be at Menagerie 3. Once you were at level 8, you raced to the Icy Peak, then stayed there for every adventure until level 10. After that, you wanted to be at the castle. The introduction of more adventure types and monsters to the Icy Peak disrupted which skills were best for surviving there, but the optimal path stayed the same. You can still see a lot of Peak-centric thinking left in guides to play that haven't been updated recently.

But those days are gone, and the modern KoL speed ascender won't spend a single adventure at the Peak. The introduction of Spookyraven Manor to the game has completely changed the dynamics of play from levels 6 through 9, and in the current kingdom mastering the Haunted Gallery is now the key to Hall of Records caliber play.

Pre-Gallery Levels

Obtaining a Spookyraven gallery key is fairly complicated. Optimal play will squeeze the adventures required to do so into any early spot where you've finished all available quests at your level. Your first few levels should go something like this:

Level 1: If you have a skill you can use to buff yourself to pass your first guild challenge, do that, consume the reward given, and you'll advance to level 2. In most cases you need a stolen accordion to cast those buffs. If you don't have one, adventure at The Haunted Pantry to try and try to unlock Spookyraven.

Level 2: Adventure at The Spooky Forest with Smooth Movement on if possible, all the adventures you want here are non-combat. Get a stolen accordion at the fork if you don't have one yet. Once you've got that and a mosquito larva, you should buff yourself enough to pass your second guild challenge and move onto Degrassi Knoll.

Level 3: Finish off the Tavern quest, then back to the Knoll. If you finish your meatcar before hitting level 4, swing by The Haunted Billiards Room.

Level 4: Run through Guano Junction as fast as you can, finish the Billiards Room, and start on the 8-bit realm. Swing by the Cola Wars battlefield if you want an early shield for things like Hero Stasis; non-Myst classes might get the whole outfit for its MP regeneration.

Level 5: Get food ingredients if you need them. Kill the Goblin king; set the MCD to get your class stat booster (particularly important for Myst classes). Finish the 8-bit realm. Visit The Haunted Library until you've read about Stephen and Elizabeth. Hit the Conservatory, and now you've got the Gallery key.

Level 6: Burn through the Friar's Quest with Smooth Movement and The Sonata of Sneakiness on to speed that up.

By the time you finish the Friar's and all the other things mentioned so far, you should be midway through level 6. Once you reach that point, unless there's food or booze to obtain you should be focused on spending every possible turn in The Haunted Gallery.

Entering the Gallery

In order to get into the gallery, your main stat has to be buffed to 68. With the right skills and boss item accumulation, you should be able to reach that by late in level 6. Keys to accomplishing this include:

• Setting the MCD to get your class reward from the Goblin King (+10 Muscle, +14 Myst, or +7 Moxie)
• Casting the Accordion Thief skill that will boost your primary stat by 10: The Power Ballad of the Arrowsmith, The Magical Mojomuscular Melody, or The Moxious Madrigal
• Muscle classes can use Rage of the Reindeer, Moxie classes have hair spray.
• The hearts summoned with the skill Summon Candy Hearts all give +3 to each stat. Since the bonus from the hearts stacks, this is an excellent way to buff your stats.
• There are some low-level items that can prove handy here. Moxie classes should have gotten the Boss Bat britches. Muscle classes might instead aim for the Boss Bat bling, just to get into the Gallery that much earlier.
• Don't forget about that extra point from your class's entry-level skill.
• Need to list some other likely and helpful items here

Surviving the Gallery

Most monsters in the Gallery aren't elemental, and when you get there early in the game you'll be lucky to survive even one hit from them. There is only one play style that allows survival: buff your initiative, buff the damage you do, equip the strongest regular weapon you can, and hit with Lunging Thrust-Smack. Spells and ranged weapons are useless for early Gallery play.

The area itself will help here, because it drops several of the best regular weapons in the game. As soon as you can equip them, a broken sword or pitchfork make great attack weapons.

Because this crucial area that you'll spend much of your run at is so LTS-centric, a player whose sole focus in playing is faster speed runs could easily justify planning skill acquisition solely around optimizing this area. Forget about perming skills mostly useful for Moxie and Mysticality play styles; you want to hit hard with regular weapons, period.

Adjusting your AT buffs and combat frequency

The main reason why the Gallery is so great for speed is because of one adventure: Louvre It or Leave It. Once you've mapped it out, this non-combat adventure can give an amazing boost to your primary stat, pushing through early levels at a rate previous unattainable.

The current data suggests that you'll get a combat adventure in the gallery 80% of the time. There is another non-combat, Out in the Garden. So normally, you would expect a Louvre 10% of the time.

That's not good enough. Every adventure spent at the Gallery should be spent with Smooth Movement and The Sonata of Sneakiness active. That will will make the area 70% combat, so that you'll average a Louvre 15% of the time. The stats boost of the Louvre is so potent that no other skill you can put into an Accordion Thief slot is even close to being as helpful.

So that's what you should have in one AT slot. If you get into the Gallery early, you're probably going to need the second slot to buff your class stat as well just to meet the entrance requirements. And you may need to use the third slot for a buff to help you survive; Jackasses' Symphony of Destruction is popular here.

As you get stronger, you can drop the main stat buffing skill for Antiphon. Once you can just survive without needing the extra damage, you can put the third slot as Phat Loot, and once you're really strong you can swap that for Ur-Kel's Aria.

Mapping the Louvre, Searching for Snakes

The above presumes you learn how to construct a Louvre Map optimally. That page lists some tool-assisted techniques for building that map; below you'll find some additional suggestions there.

As for the other non-combat adventure, Out in the Garden, the two item drops from the second knight are among the best in the game: nothing you'll encounter in a hardcore run are as useful for increasing monster level as the serpentine sword and snake shield. Until you have both, always pick the second knight in hopes of getting them. The drops are relatively rare, and you may want to fall back to using a hippo whip if you don't get either by later in your run.

If you're not in the Gallery, you're wasting turns

The formula for stat gains when hitting the Louvre have been spaded out; there is a lightly larger gain for the Muscle than other stats. Assuming you have both combat frequency skills on so you get a Louvre 15% of the time, and here's how the gain increases as your stat goes up, and what the average contribution to your stat gain from this one adventure come out to:

So even when you're the beginning of level 7, the Louvre is giving you an average of 17 (Moxie, Myst) or 24 (Muscle) extra stat points every turn you spend in the gallery. That's on top of the considerable stat points from the monsters themselves in this area. Even in the worst case of 17, it's like fighting an additional monster with a monster level of 85 every turn. It only gets better as you get more powerful.

Think about it: every turn you spend somewhere other than the Gallery, you're throwing away stat points at a high rate. This is why it's vital to get in there early, and to have finished all the low-level quests before then, as part of getting strong enough to enter the Gallery.

In fact, these gains are so strong compared to anything else that it suggests you completely ignore quests as long as you can. When you do a quest later in the game, it will take you less resources to complete it, because you'll be stronger. You can easily crank the monster level up more as well. It's not unusual now to see good players move into the Gallery late in level 6, and not to spend a single turn outside of there working on quests until reaching level 9. You run a larger risk of getting nailed by the RNG, but when you have a lucky run your run will be insanely fast with this approach.

Breaking the Hippy Outfit Habit

How to transition from a potion-dependent chef-constructing newbie into a LTS +ML monster.

Step 1:Realise that while Serums of Sarcasm and Tomato Juice of Power only get you so far, they do not increase the damage you do, or the stats you gain from fights, even if they allow you to survive in higher areas. Furthermore, if you are a Mus/Mys class, you are only multiplying your off/secondary stat.

Step 2:Realise that chef-in-the-boxen only help during a run when you know the run is going to be long. Shorter runs do not neccessarily need a chef.

Step 3:If you are to be going to the gallery at late level 6, you only have a limited time-frame to get the entire hippy outfit from The Path to the White Citadel/Hippy Camp. Therefore, unless you have insane +item drops, its probably not going to be worth it.

Step 4:Therefore, to maximise stat gains when you don't get the Louvre Adventures, you should max out +init, +ML and your damage as shown above.

Step 5:Realise that lower level quests are a lot easier than when you used potions

Step 6:Profit!

Automation and Tool-Assisted Play

Greasemonkey is your friend.

Following the best players

The amount of work the community as a whole puts into playing KoL is really amazing. Some fairly recent changes have made it easier than ever to "stalk" the best players who play in the style you'd like to emulate to find out what they do. Recommended techniques include:

• Look at the ascension histories of the players in the Hall of Records. Find a player or two you want to emulate, and be sure to check their profile regularly to find out what items they tend to equip during their run.
• Search though the KOL Ascension Database. Note which familiars the best players are using for the majority of their runs. Sell your soul/blood/body as necessary to purchase them for yourself.

Descriptions of ground-breaking runs

• Mr. Magnifico: 6-day HCO in 472 turns. Part 1, Part 2.

Familiar choice: both more and less important now