Speedrun appendix
From TheKolWiki
|   Speedrun appendix
|   Speedrun appendix
| Information or advice on this page may be out-of-date due to NS13.
LTS stuff/Stat day sections are particularly suspect. New quests need to be taken into account.
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This is the appendix to the Speed Run page. It contains all the technical information about gaining stats that was removed from the source.
Gaining Stats
Volleyball gains are equivalent to the square root of the familiar's weight. For the effect of a non-perfect square, see the Volleyball page.
Sombrero gains are determined by the formula Sqrt(Weight)*(1+Sqrt(Monster Level - 4))/10
What this means in practice is that the hovering sombrero is equal to a volleyball of the same weight when you adventure at The Valley Beyond The Orc Chasm, The Haunted Bathroom, and other areas of ML 85 and above. The sombrero pulls ahead once you move on to these harder areas. If you have Monster-level enhancers, the break-even point can come much sooner.
If you are willing to front the cost, buying a Crimbo P. R. E. S. S. I. E. is well worth it, as it acts as a volleyball normally, plus as a sombrero with the foil radar familiar equipment. This allows you to have the stats of a volleyball for the earlier areas, and then as a sombrero once you pass the 85 ML point.
Prior to NS13, some data were crunched, indicating that on a typical three-day ascension comprising about 500-550 turns, the sombrero came out better than the volleyball only if you had Monster-level enhancers. In the NS13 world, familiars are reset to one pound upon Ascension, making the sombrero a rather poor choice for the early levels of a run.
For substats required to advanced to each level, see Advancement.
Buffs and skills
For the best rate of speed ascending, the most common tactic is to boost monsters' level as much as possible, and kill them without getting hit. This is accomplished via the so-called LTSynergy strategy. For this to work, you need a number of skills:
For attacking:
For damage:
For Initiative:
What you then do is buff up with as many of these as you need to be able to (a) get the first hit on a monster, and (b) reliably kill it with that one hit.
At extremely high +MLs, you will not be able to one-hit kill the tougher monsters even with all the buff and damage-boosting equipment you can muster. At that point, you need to switch to the two-hit-kill strategy: add enough damage-absorption buffs to be able to survive at least one hit from the monsters (preferably 2 or 3, of course) and heal as needed between battles. When you reach this point, it will often be preferable to drop Jackasses' Symphony of Destruction and put on Ur-Kel's Aria of Annoyance instead, since Symphony will not be needed for a 2-hit kill and Aria will get you extra stats. Astral Shell, Ghostly Shell, Jabañero Saucesphere and Jalapeño Saucesphere are all useful buffs for this part of the run.
Stat days
If you want to do a speedrun ascension, choosing the right stat day is a great idea.
If you want to ascend under a Muscle class (Turtle Tamer and Seal Clubber) ascend on a Muscle stat day.
If you want to ascend under a Mysticality class (Pastamancer and Sauceror) ascend on a Mysticality stat day.
If you want to ascend under a Moxie class (Disco Bandit and Accordion Thief) ascend on a Moxie stat day.
If you want to know when a stat day is look at the Kingdom of Loathing Calendar.
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