Avatar of Boris
Not to be confused with The Avatar of Boris (Naughty Sorceress equivalent in Avatar of Jarlsberg).
Avatar of Boris is the Spring 2012 special challenge path, introduced on February 15, 2012. This path adds variant rules and restrictions to an ascension run. Its description in The Bureau of Reincarnation reads "You're filled with the spirit of Boris, the voracious, ferocious, and prestigious Legendary Warrior of the Times of Old. Armed with only your trusty axe Trusty and your faithful minstrel Clancy, you'll use an entirely new set of skills to defeat the Sorceress."
During an Avatar of Boris run, players are given a unique set of equipment and skills, along with a companion in place of the standard familiars. Boris's (and therefore, your) feasting is the stuff of legend, but his (and your) alcohol tolerance is very poor.
Contents
Restrictions
- Items
- No access to your bookshelf.
- No access to your clan fax machine. Attempting to retrieve a fax gives the following message: Boris didn't trust technology. You don't trust it either.
- Some skill books such as Crimbo Candy Cookbook, CRIMBCO Employee Handbooks and Hodgman's journals cannot be read. Others such as Biddy Cracker's Old-Fashioned Cookbook can be used though, and their skills can be learned.
- Equipment
- Trusty, your two-handed axe.
- Attempting to directly equip any other weapon or offhand yields the following message: Boris has no need of lesser weapons. Trusty is all you need.
- Attempting to equip another weapon through an outfit yields the following message: Boris doesn't need that lowly item.
- You may unequip Trusty (e.g. to equip a time halo at rollover).
- You will not begin with Torso Awaregness. You may re-earn it as normal from Fragnk or Melvign.
- Trusty, your two-handed axe.
- Familiars
- No access to familiars. Attempting to equip a familiar or place one in the Crown of Thrones yields the following message: Boris has no need for familiars!
- Your minstrel Clancy will perform functions similar to a familiar and will change functionality depending on what he has equipped. His initial equipment will make him restore HP and MP post-fight (similarly to a Ghuol Whelp, but 100% of the time).
- Cannot use familiar hatchlings. Attempting to do so yields the following message: Boris has no need for familiars.
- No access to familiars. Attempting to equip a familiar or place one in the Crown of Thrones yields the following message: Boris has no need for familiars!
- Skills
- No access to any non-Avatar skills.
- Skills gained outside the guild trainer, such as Gnome skills or Spookyraven skills, can be obtained as usual, but any previously permed are still unavailable unless obtained in-run. For obtaining a Spookyraven skill, the Avatar of Boris acts as a Seal Clubber.
- No access to any non-Avatar skills.
- Locations
- Since you have no guild affiliation, you cannot open Fernswarthy's tower or basement.
- You cannot adventure in The Sea. Attempting to talk to An Old Man gives the following message: That shack you saw on the main map was just a picture of a shack drawn on the ground.
Divergences
- Players will become intoxicated (and unable to adventure) upon reaching a drunkenness level of 5.
- Players may eat to 20 fullness. This increases to 25 with Legendary Appetite, or 30 with Appetite and Stomach of Steel.
- As in a teetotaler run, players receive a steel lasagna from completing Azazel's sidequest (requires 5 available fullness to consume).
- Players start with Boris's key and may immediately access Boris's Gate, which serves as a skill trainer. Learning skills does not cost any Meat.
- Attempting to bring an astral weapon or off-hand item during reincarnation yields the following warning:
- The Avatar of Boris won't use anything but Boris's trusty axe, Trusty. Are you sure you want to take that astral pet?
- Attempting to bring an astral shirt during reincarnation yields the following warning:
- The Avatar of Boris has no need to cover his manly nipples, do you really want to take that astral pet?
- However, you can buy Torso Awaregness in run if you ascend under a Gnomish sign or learn it from Melvign the Gnome.
- Attempting to bring an astral pet sweater during reincarnation yields the following warning:
- The Avatar of Boris has no need of familiar companions, do you really want to take that astral pet?
- You cannot drop the Avatar of Boris path until day 3. Boris hated quitters.
- Upon freeing King Ralph you must choose a class. If you choose a Moxie-based or a Mysticality-based class, muscle will switch with your new class's main stat. If you still have certain quest items when you do this, including Boris's key and Frobozz Real-Estate Company Instant House (TM), they are lost. (Not all quest items are lost in this way.)
- Players may free pull Boris's Helm or Boris's Helm (askew).
- On the Feast of Boris, despite being a holiday dedicated to you, you do not gain additional stomach capacity, just like other challenge paths. The wandering monsters also only drop the lower-level food.
Class
Rather than playing any of the traditional 6 classes, you will play as an Avatar of Boris with entirely different skills.
- Your main stat is Muscle.
- You will not be accepted into any of the traditional guilds. You will not be able to use a guild to unlock any quests or areas.
- Boris didn't want to belong to any organizations that would have him as a member. Of course, given his history of violence and tendency to eat everything he saw, almost no organization would have him as a member, so it didn't come up very often.
- You will not be instructed on how to obtain access to the Shore. Note that a bitchin' meatcar will still work if built, as will a Desert Bus pass or a pumpkin carriage.
- You receive Muscle class items from Your Pen Pal.
- The Captain of the Gourd wants Knob Goblin firecrackers.
- The Trapper gives you Muscle class rewards.
- You find a dead Seal Clubber and get a Ben-Gal™ Balm from the tavern quest.
- You get a giant discarded bottlecap from the Giant Trash Quest.
- You can find a tattered wolf standard in The Haunted Bedroom to learn Snarl of the Timberwolf.
- The remains of a jilted mistress does not drop any chintzy jewelry.
- The Avalanche! adventure at The Icy Peak will not occur.
- You count as a Muscle class for the darrrt game in the pirate bar.
- In the PvP attack dialog, your method of attack defaults to Bully.
- No class name appears in the "search players" dialog. However, the class name "Avatar of Boris" does appear on public character sheets, and in the Ascension History (with an axe icon).
- The Field of Strawberries in A Moment of Reflection gives you yellow matter custard. In the Croquet Grounds, you fight a croqueteer.
- You receive a pig-iron helm from the Empty lot.
- The secret from the future gives nothing. Boris lives in the moment.
- You can get the Instru-mental encounter at the Hobo Marketplace. You can buy a dinged-up triangle. You do not get offered a sealhide drum.
- Upon breaking the prism, you will lose the Boris path, and be asked to choose one of the original classes to play until you ascend again. Your stats will be switched to fit the new class. You will lose Trusty and Clancy, and your Stomach and Liver capacities will be set to their standard values (15/14 respectively, or 20/14 if you have Stomach of Steel).
Quests
- Since you cannot equip other weapons, you cannot fight the Knob Goblin King by wearing the Elite Guard uniform. This also means that you cannot discover the password to access the Dispensary.
- Wear the Harem Girl disguise and perfume instead.
- You do not have access to the Nemesis quest and therefore cannot obtain boxen for a bartender, a chef, or a 4-d camera. (An unrelated update later added a way of obtaining boxes from a Monorail Station.)
- During the Mt. McLargeHuge Quest you cannot equip the Mining Gear to enter Itznotyerzitz Mine. A new monster called mountain man, which drops ore, appears in the Mine.
- Clancy does not count toward the +50% item drops needed in Twin Peak, but the Song of Fortune does, as does Hungry Eyes. If you don't have Song of Fortune or Hungry Eyes yet, you may use cyclops eyedrops, or stack up astral mask + Baron von Ratsworth's monocle + observational glasses + miner's helmet + Hustlin', or maybe drink some crystal skeleton vodka or pumpkin juice, or just burn the hotel down.
- Since you cannot equip the unstable fulminate, you'll need to use the other recipe in the Spookyraven Manor Cellar.
- Don't bother obtaining or pulling other items you may be accustomed to using to speed up quests but cannot equip in this path. For example, you won't be able to use a loadstone, logging hatchet, UV-resistant compass.
- Boris's key will be consumed when you unlock Boris's Lock in the Naughty Sorceress' Tower Door. If you have unused skill points, spend them before unlocking the lock.
- You do not need a Wand of Nagamar. The third form of the Naughty Sorceress is The Avatar of Sneaky Pete and requires no special items.
- Defeating the Naughty Sorceress in hardcore does not produce any equipment as a reward, stainless steel or otherwise.
Avatar
When wearing outfits, the outfit avatar overrides this avatar. A custom avatar is not affected.
Skills
You begin with two skills:
Mighty Axing – A normal attack that never fumbles and gives +1 muscle substat if used at least once during combat, even if it misses.
Laugh it Off – Restores 1-2 HP.
Rather than purchasing new skills for meat, you may revel in Boris's glory at Boris's Gate. You may learn skills from 3 trees: Fighting, Shouting, and Feasting. Each skill you learn costs one skill point, regardless of rank.
You begin with 1 skill point, plus 1 point for each normal (softcore) Avatar of Boris ascension completed, and 2 points for each hardcore Avatar of Boris ascension completed. (This means that on your first AoB run, you'll only start with 1 skill point.) You gain 1 additional skill point each time you level up, up to level 15.
Since you only gain skill points up to level 15, if you want more than 15 skills, you must ascend repeatedly for bonus starting points.
You cannot skip ranks within a skill tree. In order to learn a 3rd-rank skill, you must first learn the 1st-rank and 2nd-rank skills from that same tree.
You can have only one song effect active at a time. Singing a different song will remove the first one automatically.
Rank | Fighting | Shouting | Feasting | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Name | Type | Effect | Name | Type | Effect | Name | Type | Effect | |
1 | ![]() Cleave |
Combat 5 MP |
To-Hit bonus and heavy damage (not auto-hit) |
![]() Intimidating Bellow |
Combat 3 MP |
Delevels by 15% of monster attack | ![]() Demand Sandwich |
Noncombat 5 MP |
Summons 3 sandwiches a day |
2 | ![]() Ferocity |
Passive | +25% Critical Hit Chance | ![]() Legendary Bravado |
Passive | All Attributes +10 | ![]() Legendary Girth |
Passive | So-So Resistance to All Elements |
3 | ![]() Broadside |
Combat 10 MP |
Stuns for 4 rounds | ![]() Song of Accompaniment |
Song 10 MP |
Minstrel Level +3 | ![]() Song of the Glorious Lunch |
Song 10 MP |
+1 adventure per fullness from food, like Got Milk |
4 | ![]() Sick Pythons |
Passive |
|
![]() Big Lungs |
Passive | Regenerate 8-10 HP per Adventure | ![]() Big Boned |
Passive | Maximum HP +30% |
5 | ![]() Pep Talk |
Noncombat 1 MP |
+30 Monster Level (toggled at will) |
![]() Song of Solitude |
Song 15 MP |
Decreases Combat Frequency by 20% | ![]() Legendary Appetite |
Passive | Increases stomach by 5 |
6 | ![]() Throw Trusty |
Combat 7 MP |
Ranged auto-hit combat skill | ![]() Good Singing Voice |
Passive | Doubles duration of Boris songs | ![]() Heroic Belch |
Combat 5 MP |
Deals Stench Damage based on fullness |
7 | ![]() Legendary Luck |
Passive | Significantly increases critical hit damage | ![]() Song of Fortune |
Song 10 MP |
|
![]() Hungry Eyes |
Passive | +100% Food Drops |
8 | ![]() Song of Cockiness |
Song 15 MP |
+30 Monster Level | ![]() Louder Bellows |
Passive | Improves Intimidating Bellow (Delevels by 30%, stuns monster for one round) | ![]() More to Love |
Passive | Minstrel Level +3 |
9 | ![]() Legendary Impatience |
Passive | +100% Combat Initiative | ![]() Song of Battle |
Song 10 MP |
|
![]() Barrel Chested |
Passive | Muscle +50% |
10 | ![]() Bifurcating Blow |
Combat 10 MP |
Insta-kill with 20-adv cooldown | ![]() Banishing Shout |
Combat 50 MP |
Banishes up to 3 enemies at a time | ![]() Gourmand |
Passive | +1 adventure per fullness from food |
Once you have learned all of the skills in a category the page will say:
- You have mastered <Skill Type>.
When you learn a skill:
- The statue of Boris winks at you, and you feel new strength well up inside you. Or maybe that's just your stomach growling.

Clancy
Clancy is your bard, and serves as a replacement for your familiar.Clancy can level up, but he does not gain weight like other familiars. Effects that increase familiar weight have no effect on him. He gains a level by encountering special path-specific noncombat adventures, and some skills can also increase Clancy's level (eg More to Love).
Clancy's effects depend on which instrument he is using. New instruments may be found in various places; using one causes him to swap to it, changing his avatar, and giving you back the previous instrument.
- He begins with Clancy's sackbut, which causes him to act like a Ghuol Whelp (except that he acts after 100% of fights instead of 50%).
- Clancy's crumhorn, available from Uncle P's Antiques, causes him to act like a volleyball.
- Clancy's lute, available at level 7, causes him to act like a fairy.
When Clancy uses the crumhorn or the lute, his effective volleyball or fairy weight is 5 times his level.
Strategy
- See this page for tips & strategies.
Rewards
- If this is your first run as the Avatar of Boris, opening the letter from King Ralph XI unlocks a new class tattoo. There is also a sparkly tattoo available upon completion of a hardcore run as an Avatar of Boris.
- Players will receive a Thwaitgold stag beetle statuette upon defeating the Naughty Sorceress.
- Learning all Boris skills (which requires a minimum of 15 extra Boris points at the start of the run) will grant a Note from Clancy after ascending, which grants Request Sandwich.
- Reaching Level 30 as an Avatar of Boris makes you eligible for the And My Axe trophy.
- Freeing the King, or dropping Avatar of Boris, will make you ineligible for the trophy.
History
- Somewhere around the beginning of September 2012, Avatars of Boris became unable to enter The Sea. Prior to this, they could talk to the Old Man and enter normally. This caused some glitches:
- When obtaining a Sea skill, you were treated as a Turtle Tamer.
- If you broke the prism and changed class after entering the Sea but before finishing all of the Sea quests (little brother, big brother, grandpa + skill, grandma), you were unable to proceed with any of them. This broken state persisted until you ascended.
- Prior to The Naughty Sorceress' Tower revamp on 2015, the Avatar of Boris was able to bypass some of its obstacles with little resistance:
- No star weapon was needed for the Star Key part of A Perplexing Door; instead, Trusty needed to be equipped.
- Trusty is made of stuff older than the stars, and makes short work of the cage.
- However, you still needed Richard's star key and a star hat.
- You did not have to equip the huge mirror shard to deflect the Naughty Sorceress's attack:
- You laugh as the beam of energy harmlessly bounces off your powerful chest muscles and shoots back down the hallway. You hear a muffled curse and the sound of breaking stone.
- You needed not fear the Sorceress's familiars:
- Calling on all the Boris inside you, you emit a mighty bellow, and the sorceress's pet goes running. That takes care of that!
- No star weapon was needed for the Star Key part of A Perplexing Door; instead, Trusty needed to be equipped.
- Prior to the introduction of the quest The Shirt Off His Lack of Back, the astral shirt was of dubious use in a Boris run as it required you to play a gnome sign and buy the skill to wear shirts during the run. Now that this quest was introduced, you can acquire the ability to wear shirts immediately at the start of the run (quest scales with level, and costs 21 adventures). You will still receive a warning if you try to take an astral shirt into a Boris run, but the warning can be safely ignored.