Hardcore Oxygenarian Strategy
From TheKolWiki
The ultimate KoL challenge is a Hardcore Oxygenarian ascension. Forbidden from consuming food or booze, the number of adventures you can amass per day is severely restricted. Likewise, any stat bonuses from eating or drinking would be unavailable. This article aims to impart what HCO wisdom is available.
Once you decide to leap into an HCO character, remember: you can always go to the account menu and drop the path if it becomes too tedious, at the cost of losing your path rewards.
Recommended Skills
Most of what is covered in the Hardcore Skill Analysis applies to Oxygenarian strategy as well. Given that Oxygenarians cannot consume food or booze, HCO characters should have a healthy roster of hardcore permanent skills prior to attempting an HCO run. Several skills acquire increased importance in Oxy. Most of your skills should focus on turncount-reduction. Pulverize and Super-Advanced Meatsmithing, the only skills that may be said to grant more adventures in HCO, also have high priority. Beyond these, there are a few support skills that acquire increased importance due to the length of an Oxy run. Below we describe why each skill is so valuable in Oxy particularly -- refer to the Hardcore Skill Analysis for a broader picture of its use and relative importance.
Extremely Useful Skills
- Amphibian Sympathy is a passive Turtle Tamer skill that raises your familiar level by five levels.
- Empathy of the Newt and Leash of Linguini both confer an additional five pet levels each.
- Pulverize allows you to smash equipment into powder, nuggets, or wads. Wads can be consumed for extra adventures and stats at the cost of spleen hits. See also Hardcore Pulverizing.
- Mad Looting Skillz (20%, passive), Phat Loot (20%, 11-MP buff) and Powers of Observatiogn (10%, passive) all reduce turns spent hunting for items. Their combined effect is 50% item drops, for a 1/3 reduction in the expected time for a given drop.
- Smooth Movement and The Sonata of Sneakiness both increase the likelihood of non-combat adventures, which helps when farming for required uniforms or S.O.C.K. parts, licking the Deep Fat Friars' Gate Quest, spinning the castle wheel, or getting stat gain non-combats in the various rooms in Spookyraven Manor and similar areas. In particular, they are useful for bringing up the Haunted Gallery's Louvre It or Leave It adventure, one of the most valuable non-combat adventures in the game.
- Aloysius' Antiphon of Aptitude (skill) gives 3 extra substat points per combat adventure, the same bonus given by a nine-pound volleyball-type familiar. Its unusual distribution (1:1:1 instead of 2:1:1) makes it arguably even more useful, as it helps prevent offstats from lagging significantly behind. While expensive, each cast (assuming legend) can give up to 30 additional substat points (depending on the percentage of combats in your current adventuring area), making it well worth the 40 MP per cast.
- Ur-Kel's aria raises Monster Level at an MP cost of 30. At level 6 or higher it gives more substats than Antiphon while consuming less MP - if you can survive it.
- Transcendent Olfaction dramatically increases the chances of encountering a tagged monster -- this helps immensely with required item drops. Perfumes in the Harem, cheese in the Goatlet, and stars in the Hole in the Sky are all examples. Its effect can be mimicked using an odor extractor, if a bounty can be collected efficiently.
Other Useful Daycount-Reduction Skills
Support Skills
The following support skills gain higher importance in Oxygenarian runs relative to standard HC strategy:
- Superhuman Cocktailcrafting gives Moxie classes 10 bottles of tonic water (300-500 MP) per day for only 700 Meat -- a massive and well-needed influx of MP when keeping numerous expensive buffs active.
- The Magical Mojomuscular Melody increases your MP headroom to take advantage of the more frequent tonic waters, orange candy hearts and purple snowcones you acquire (relative to other paths). It also empowers early casting of Antiphon and Ur-Kel's, making those skills even more powerful.
- Advanced Saucecrafting and Impetuous Sauciness together allow you to cook useful 10-turn (15-turn for Saucerors) Reagent Potions, although the more useful potions require either farming for ingredients or finding the Filthy Hippy Disguise to get access to The Hippy Store. If you're having problems defeating monsters, especially in later levels, helpful potions can get you over the hump. Adding The Way of Sauce lets you spend your run fully reagented if you also get the hippy suit. Very few top ascenders use this strategy, but some do, and many casual players enjoy it greatly. This strategy is most useful to Moxie classes. Muscle classes can use Blood of the Wereseal to similar effect, while Myst classes will be multiplying an offstat and not a main stat.
- An Oxygenarian player with Summon Snowcones or Summon Candy Heart can spend most of a run -- and all of the high-leverage parts of a run -- with a snowcone and/or candy heart effect.
- Ambidextrous Funkslinging allows the use of two items per combat round. Its main application is in defeating the tougher bosses, like the Shadow Class enemy in the final quest. Stunning and healing items can be used in combination if players get close to being Beaten Up.
Lead-In Ascension
An HCO ascension can be helped along by planning the previous ascension's rewards.
One helping of Breathetastic™ Premium Canned Air (the consumable reward for a softcore Oxy) will grant an average of 65 in your main substat, and gives an average of 22 adventures, more than half a day's worth. The advantage of doing multiple HCO runs in a row is that the previous run's reward will be usable in the next one. The obvious disadvantage is the slow (in terms of real-time days) progress of your character.
With access to Little Canadia Jewelers under a Mysticality moon sign and the appropriate reward from your previous ascension, you can ply a baconstone bracelet, which reduces spell costs by 1, and a hamethyst necklace, which gives +5 melee damage (useful for LTSers at mid-skills). Really Expensive Jewelrycrafting provides more Myst sign jewelry options for the mid-game. Most speed ascenders would recommend selling off the rest of your gems.
The stainless steel rewards for a simple HC ascension may be more useful than the plexiglass ones for a more trying Oxygenarian run, due to the high stat requirements. This is particularly true if the stat requirement for the item is not aligned with the current ascension's main stat.
The stainless steel slacks (DB) and stainless steel suspenders (AT) both boost Moxie by 15%, which helps you to survive tougher areas if you can't one-hit-kill. The slacks additionally raise initiative (help with stealing and killing the monsters before they can cause too much damage) and Meat drops. The two Mysticality SS items increase Mysticality by 15%. The stainless steel solitaire also grants two more rollover adventures (handy, given you won't be able to eat or drink) and decreases spellcasting costs by 2 MP, to help fuel buffs and attack skills. A Sauceror's stainless steel scarf adds 20 each to monster level and spell damage; good for spellslingers who can kill effectively. Of the Muscle rewards, a Seal Clubber's stainless steel shillelagh is more valuable to an LTSer; in addition to a 15% Muscle bonus, it does lots of damage and increases critical hit frequency.
What class should you choose to do an HCO ascension? It depends on what skills you have marked hardcore permanent. You should strongly consider doing unpathed runs to acquire the "essential" skills above before you start your Oxy career, but enjoying Oxy with few skills requires only patience.
Characters with few skills often enjoy playing Accordion Thief or a Disco Bandit. Since their primary stat is Moxie, it will be hard for monsters to inflict damage, and it will be possible to progress to more difficult regions of the Kingdom sooner. Pickpocket gives a second (zeroth?) chance to grab required items. And if you have Superhuman Cocktailcrafting permed, you can convert soda water from The Market into bottles of tonic water for a relatively effective MP restorer. Remember that ATs start with a stolen accordion for AT buffs, and can access other guild stores at level nine.
Have some nice combat skills, like LTSynergy? Then perhaps Muscle is the way to go. SCs and TTs get an innate 50% bonus to their maximum HP; in conjunction with Muscle (upon which base HP depends) being their main stat, and Blood of the Wereseal (percentage change in Muscle based on moonlight) being available at The Smacketeria, they are the most resilient classes in the game. Projections for wereseal bonuses can be accessed on the Noblesse Oblige website.
All-healing Medicinal Herb's medicinal herbs are also sold at the Muscle guild store, so fighter classes can take a licking and keep on ticking. For those not willing to sacrifice a valuable spleen point on herbs, a scroll of drastic healing will accomplish the same thing (though only available late in the game), and the Pastamancer's Cannelloni Cocoon skill heals all wounds for 20 MP.
Additionally, Turtle Tamers have chaining attack skills, which can stun or weaken enemies, though at a high MP cost. Chaining TT attacks can easily kill the Naughty Sorceress.
Mysticality classes have a natural 50% MP cap bonus, and get access to magical mystery juice, by far the best MP restorer in mid and later levels, from Gouda's Grimoire and Grocery. Offhand cookbooks from the Grocery, while pricey, raise spell damage and can manipulate spell elements to take advantage of monster weaknesses.
Since Oxy runs span one or more stat days, the equipment is more important than the moon signs in choosing a class. The traditional "Oxy Loop" of SC->TT->DB->AT->PM->S lets each class use the equipment reward conferred by the previous run. It doesn't provide an optimal order for acquiring the essential Oxy skills, however.
Familiars
A stat-boosting familiar is a must for your HCO ascension. Sombrero vs Volleyball shows when sombreros win over volleyballs, the two main types of stat gain familiars. The gist of it is that, if you can raise monster levels really high and still survive, the sombrero ends up being better for combat stat gains. However, many of the volleyball-type familiars have supplementary skills that are very useful. An Ancient Yuletide Troll sometimes heals HP or regenerates MP after combat, a Hunchbacked Minion increases Meat drops, and a Jill-O-Lantern attacks enemies. Though the sombrero's a one-trick pony, you can mimic the results of the multi-skill familiars by using Stasis or temporarily switching in a Cocoabo or a Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot to farm for Meat and replenish health. Note also that the Crimbo P. R. E. S. S. I. E. can act as either a sombrero or a volleyball, depending on what equipment it wears.
It is also pivotal to have a good item drop familiar, as this will let you get more quickly through any quest that requires items to drop (the L33t Tr4pz0r Quest, The Hole in the Sky, and The Giant's Castle most notably). By more quickly completing these portions of the game, you can more quickly resume adventuring in stat gain areas. As for which item drop familiar to use, there are a couple of very good options. Premier among them is the Green Pixie, which opens up the Worm Wood via dropped tiny bottles of absinthe. The Wood can be manipulated early on to get not-pipes to fill spleen for stats and adventures.
A Mr. Store Gravychaun (Attention-Deficit Demon, Jitterbug, Coffee Pixie, Casagnova Gnome) will provide item drop and Meat drop increases, allowing for a Volleychaun's Meat drop coverage for MP restoration to extend into when you are using your item drop familiar. The Dandy Lion provides even better MP restoration, as it also behaves like a Ghuol Whelp (and with a whip, attacks like a Sabre-Toothed Lime). The Crimbo Elf and the Elemental Gravy fairies are a solid choice as well, due to their attacking power. The Sleazy Gravy Fairy is very good for the ability to get her equipment nearly effortlessly from The Sleazy Back Alley, but her Element is not optimal. It is usually best to pick an elemental Gravy Fairy based on where you plan on using it. Flaming Gravy Fairy is good for its ability to deal doubled damage against physically resistant monsters, and an argument could be made for most of the other elements as well. The only drawback to this is that it will be impossible or close to impossible to get the +5 pound equipment for a non-Sleaze elemental Gravy Fairy, but if your stat gain familiar is one without a +5 itself (notably the Ancient Yuletide Troll and the Spirit Hobo) this can be used to your advantage to force a lead necklace from the arena, which can be used for both.
Oxygenarians should of course make sure they have a Star Starfish and each of the Naughty Sorceress's familiars to complete their ascension.
Moon Signs
Some moon signs are much more useful than others in an HCO ascension. In fact, some are downright worthless. Since NS13, all moon signs have access to a monster irritation device, which boosts Monster Level. Several bosses give bonus drops when their level is boosted by a given amount.
Muscle
Muscle signs have access to the innards of Degrassi Knoll, which allows for the quick unlocking of the Desert Beach. Those willing to farm for a smart skull and a disembodied brain can also make a meat maid, which offers four extra adventures per rollover. The detuned radio is the Muscle monster irritation device, raising ML by up to ten points.
On top of this, Innabox and The Plunger provide free (simple) smithing and meat paste combining respectively.
As for individual signs:
- The Wallaby grants a 0-3lb boost to your familiar.
- The Vole grants an extra 0.5x to critical hit chance. It is not particularly useful if your character can one- or two-hit-kill (LTSynergy), or you have enough Moxie to dodge effectively.
- The Mongoose gives 1-3 Muscle substats about 20% of the time after combat.
Mysticality
The Super-Secret Canadian Mind-Control Device is the Mysticality monster irritation device, raising ML by up to 11 points. Additionally, Jewelrymaking and Really Expensive Jewelrycrafting allow you to put your Meat gem ascension rewards to use, should you elect to keep them rather than sell them for early Meat.
The individual Mysticality signs are:
- The Platypus, which is the mystical analogue to the muscular Mongoose.
- The Opossum, which gives extra adventures from food -- useless in the context of HCO.
- The Marmot, which sometimes grants a ten-leaf clover after a non-combat adventure; far too rarely to be of use even over the course of an Oxygenarian run.
Moxie
Moxie signs are the least useful for HCOs. Their ascension area is The Gnomish Gnomads' Camp, where the drop rates of the special items are too low to be of use, and Fragnk's trainable skills aren't worth their purchase cost, nor the lost advantages from alternative moon signs. Their monster irritator, The Annoy-o-Tron 5000, isn't available until Desert Beach is unlocked, and this is obviously more difficult than if the car parts can be purchased, like in Muscle signs.
- The Wombat is the moxious analogue to the muscular Mongoose.
- The Blender provides extra adventures from booze -- useless for Oxygenarians.
- The Packrat sometimes increases base Meat drops from monsters.
In Conclusion
If you want to be reborn under a Muscle sign, choose Mongoose or Wallaby. If you choose to go with a Mysticality sign, choose Platypus for Myst classes and Marmot otherwise. Moxie signs are a poor choice for Oxygenarian speed ascensions.
Always bank as many adventures as possible for stat days. In fact, consider banking a full 200 adventures for your main stat day, to maximize level gains. One possible exception would be when you have a Green Pixie and some absinthe saved, in which case an argument could be made for running the Worm Wood. Note, however, that Pixies don't drop absinthe while you're under the absinthe effect. Those with Pulverize and access to high-level equipment drops can also recoup the adventure losses by using wad hits. This is generally only profitable in the late game (see Hardcore Pulverizing), though those with access to The Malus of Forethought can combine pulverized parts earlier.
Stat-bequeathing quest items such as the chest of the Bonerdagon or the stat script should be saved for stat days. If you're having trouble scrounging together enough wads to fill your spleen on a stat day (or any day!), consider heading to The Market to shop for strongness elixirs, magicalness-in-a-cans, or moxie weeds.
Areas
The potential for wasted adventures while farming low-level areas for required items, as well as optional items like the meat maid, can be alleviated by knowing at what levels the materials become available and manipulating the Adventure Queue. Don't forget that common items can be untinkered; your meat car's engine can be reused for your meat maid, a skeleton bone can be used in both a skeleton key and a bone rattle in the Sorceress' lair. When playing as a Moxie class, don't forget you can attempt to pickpocket after winning initiative.
Mucking around in the Daily Dungeon for the three required keys can be a nightmare. However, you can save adventures by ignoring the chests in rooms 3 and 6, and using a skeleton key to open locked doors (this sometimes breaks the key, so make sure to have a spare for the final quest). Keep an eye on what's in the Dungeon by visiting the Noblesse Oblige clan site, which often updates the Dungeon's rooms right after rollover. Don't go dungeon-delving when you don't have a good chance of passing the day's stat tests. Aside from that, do the Dungeon as early as possible so you're not wasting high-level adventures in this low-level zone.
Aside from doing the required quests, you want to spend as much time as is feasible in an area with large stat gain non-combat. Prime examples are The Haunted Gallery (because of the fantastic stat gains from Louvre It or Leave It), The Haunted Bedroom (which has a higher stat requirement, but more frequent non-combats), or The Haunted Ballroom (where you can increase item drops or go On the Trail to get extra dance cards). During the Quest for the Holy MacGuffin, The Palindome may also be an option for Moxie classes. The Gallery is a good choice early on, due to its lower stat/opening requirement and higher scaling fraction.
When strong enough, you'll want to mix in visits to the Haunted Bedroom if you find yourself in off-stat trouble (easy to do with a double stat day in the middle of your run). The very low combat rate in the Bedroom can be further lowered via permed skills, and if the infrequent remaining combats are too difficult, they can effectively be skipped using CLEESH. If the Gallery proves to be too trying, then any area with few or no worthless non-combat adventures is a good substitute. Spellslingers who lack Pulverize may reasonably prefer the Icy Peak, as damage is doubled and main stat gains approach that of the Gallery. Otherwise, the Laboratory, the Menagerie Level 1 or Level 2, or The Goatlet are good for mid-power adventurers, while Menagerie Level 3 or the Lair of the Ninja Snowmen, and The Haunted Bathroom (which has some good non-combat stat adventures, and the one bad non-combat can be skipped without using an adventure) for tougher characters. It may also be worth visiting the Haunted Ballroom, especially for characters that have already spent some time in the Haunted Bedroom, as the Strung-Up Quartet adventure in the Ballroom can give you a permanent +5% to non-combat adventure frequency, which will increase the rate of good stat non-combat adventures like the Louvre and help you speed through the level 10 quest.
Since the revamp of late 2006, Moxie characters could consider The Palindome as an alternative to the Gallery. The procedure for opening the Gallery can end up requiring a rather large turn investment, while opening the 'Dome needs adventures in The Obligatory Pirate's Cove, which is required for completing quests farther down the road anyway. Note that the Cove's stat requirement for entry is merely five points higher than The Haunted Library, which needs to be visited to open the Gallery.
The non-combats in the Palindome occur slightly more frequently than in the Gallery, and offer more balanced stat returns from papaya wars. The monsters in the 'Dome also yield slightly higher stats via increased Monster Level. The wad returns in the Palindome are also quite good.
Opening the Stat Areas Early
Once an ascender has collected a suite of reliable combat skills, the limiting factor to speeding through the early levels is the buffed main stat, which controls which areas are accessible. In particular, 68 main stat is necessary to adventure in the Gallery and Ballroom; 85 is required for the Bedroom and to unlock the Ballroom. Since the Meat and stat gains in the Gallery are so desirable, buffing early can be a good investment.
There are many ways of boosting main stat in the first (or any "early") day of a hardcore Oxy run:
- The obvious ones are the AT stat buffs (+10).
- The detuned radio/MCD/AoT5000 can be tweaked to make The Knob Goblin King drop the appropriate booster.
- Muscle Sign ascendants incarnated as a Muscle class could consider spending a turn or two in The Knob Shaft to collect some ores. Innabox can smith them, at no turn cost, into some good early combat weapons which add +3 Muscle, or +6 if dual-wielding.
- Advanced Saucecrafters can turn various fruits into +100% boosting potions; however, Moxie classes are out of luck as olives drop too late in the game to help. A tomato juice of powerful power (+50%) requires a tomato, which drops sometimes in the Knob Goblin Kitchens, and less frequently in The Haunted Pantry. Note that though cooking turns will seem wasted, it is likely they will be recouped from wads or higher stat gains in the Gallery or alternatives. Players may wish to put together the Filthy Hippy Disguise to gain easy access to fruit.
- Players who have taken the strange route of HC-perming CLEESH on top of Saucecrafting can also bake stat-boosting potions (+25) from amphibian body parts. Good candidates for CLEESHing are monsters whose drops aren't needed: any 8-bit creatures that don't drop the pixels needed, a Knob Goblin Elite Guardsman encountered in the Harem, even monsters in the stat-grind areas whose drops aren't required.
Strategy With Clovers
Most players in any HCO run will use their n00b clover for a big rock, to make a Rock and Roll legend to lengthen AT buffs. With only quest-cooking required, there is not much of a reason to craft an Epic Weapon for boxes in the "Fun" House to make automatic cookers or tenders. However, players relying on reagent potions may find it cost-efficient to construct a chef-in-the-box.
At low or mid skills -- with reduced access to +ML and lower wad coverage for your run -- gathering ten-leaf clovers while banking for your main stat day can be turncount-productive, but only if you use those clovers in the high-yield areas: The Haunted Gallery (Muscle), The Haunted Bathroom (Mysticality), or The Haunted Ballroom (Moxie). As the clover yield scales to your main stat, it's best to use them at the very end of your main stat day or the end of your run. Using one strategically to gain access to a higher-stat-yield area can also be a good choice.
Effectively, gathering clovers while banking turns converts a low yield, non-stat-day turn into a very high yield, end-of-stat-day turn.
Depending on what access you have to items, ML, healing and MP, using a clover in the following places can be a strategically sound choice:
Clovering the Hidden Temple or other low-yield areas is never a good idea -- you should spend that time in an area that yields items, Meat and stats. Clovering the Treasury for a dense meat stack should only be done as a last resort, and reflects poor planning. Finally, don't use a clover to prefarm a sonar-in-a-biscuit or baseball -- but if you have a clover or can obtain one from the hermit it provides the fastest and surest route to obtaining a baseball.
With no way to reveal semi-rare counters from fortune cookies, HCO ascensions have particular problems finding these special adventures. The problem is exacerbated by an Oxygenarian's need to spend as many adventures as possible advancing quests and character level, which is generally done outside of areas with useful semi-rares.
Semi-rares can potentially be farmed once an initial SR is found. Since the SR counter resets to approximately 100 adventures, HCO SR farmers can start adventuring in SR areas about 100 turns after their previous SR. However, this can result in serious adventure waste (not to mention that some special adventures can overwrite SRs and confuse the count), so this is not particularly recommended.
In the HCO context, the most useful semi-rares (and thus some areas where players may wish to farm SRs anyway) are:
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