Community Service

Community Service is the Fall 2015 special challenge path, introduced on August 15, 2015. This path adds variant rules and restrictions to an ascension run. Its description in The Bureau of Reincarnation reads "The ultimate in real-life time savings. All Council Quests are replaced with single button-clicks!"

Divergences

• The council is out:

The door to the Council of Loathing building is locked, and a notice is posted about how they got kicked off the council for not doing their mandatory community service, which is apparently a thing. There's a list of community service opportunities posted as well..

• Instead you have to perform 11 acts of Community Service
  • Each act takes 60 adventures.
  • Most acts you can speed up by boosting a specific stat
• Once 11 acts are complete, you have to donate your body to science.
• You can pull only 5 items per day in softcore. Hardcore allows for no pulls.
• Areas that the Council instructs you to visit are generally impossible to reach without reinstating the Council--that is, by ascending into a non-Community Service path.
  • Level 3: The Typical Tavern
  • Level 4: The Bat Hole
  • Level 5: The interior of Cobb's Knob. It is possible to get a Knob Goblin encryption key in run, but you will not receive the corresponding map.
  • Level 6: Copse of the Deep Fat Friars and Pandamonium. (No Steel Organ)
  • Level 7: The Cyrpt
  • Level 8: Mt. McLargeHuge
  • Level 9: You can not reach The Orc Chasm, get to The Highlands, or venture to The Valley of Rof L'm Fao.
  • Level 10: You can not plant The Beanstalk
  • Level 11: You can not receive your father's MacGuffin diary, so no more visits to The Hidden City or The Palindome. You will not find The Arid, Extra-Dry Desert or discover A Small Pyramid.
  • Level 12: You can not start the war, so you will only get the antebellum The Mysterious Island of Mystery.
  • The only exceptions are The Distant Woods or areas that have alternate unlock methods such as Whitey's Grove.

Text

Council text

• First time visiting:

  The door to the Council of Loathing building is locked, and a notice is posted about how they got kicked off the council for not doing their mandatory community service, which is apparently a thing. There's a list of community service opportunities posted as well.
  
  Look at the list

Strategy

Task	Reduced by	Reward	Effects
Coil Wire	nothing	a ten-percent bonus	1000 substats to each stat
Donate Blood	HP – every 30 bonus HP saves 1 turn. (Buffed HP - (Buffed Muscle + 3))/30	blood-drive sticker	40 Adventures, 10 Toxicity 250-300(?) substats to each stat
Feed The Children (But Not Too Much)	Muscle – every 30 bonus muscle saves 1 turn. (Buffed - Base)/30	bag of grain	Mysticality +200% +60% Booze Drops from Monsters
Build Playground Mazes	Mysticality – every 30 bonus mysticality saves 1 turn. (Buffed - Base)/30	pocket maze	Moxie +200% Stupendous Hot Resistance (+4)
Feed Conspirators	Moxie – every 30 bonus moxie saves 1 turn. (Buffed - Base)/30	shady shades	Muscle +200% -20% Combat Frequency
Breed More Collies	Familiar Weight – every 5 lbs saves 1 turn	squeaky toy rose	-20% Combat Frequency
Reduce Gazelle Population	Melee Damage – every +50% saves 1 turn, every +50 damage saves 1 turn. (floored separately)	weird gazelle steak	40 Adventures, 10 Fullness Spell Damage +200% +60% Booze Drops from Monsters
Make Sausage	Spell Damage – every +50% saves 1 turn, every +50 damage saves 1 turn. (floored separately)	sausage without a cause	40 Adventures, 10 Fullness Weapon Damage +200% Stupendous Hot Resistance (+4)
Be a Living Statue	Non-Combat Frequency – every 5% noncombat saves 3 turns (not affected by the 25% softcap)	silver face paint	+20 to Familiar Weight
Make Margaritas	Item and Booze Drops – every +30% item% saves 1 turn, every +15% booze drop saves 1 turn. (floored separately)	emergency margarita	40 Adventures, 10 Drunkenness Weapon Damage +200% Spell Damage +200%
Clean Steam Tunnels	Hot Resistance – every point of hot resistance saves 1 turn	vintage smart drink	40 Adventures, 10 Drunkenness Maximum HP +120 +20 to Familiar Weight

• Lots of the rewards provide a one-adventure bonus to a stat. So you can use them to do another Community Service.
  • Coil Wire – can't be sped up, so you can do it early in the run. The reward will make percentage buffs save more turns on the stat tests.
  • Donate Blood – look into Maximizing Your HP. If you are a muscle class or have a passive skill (Reptilian Fortitude, Song of Starch, Abs of Tin, et al.) or item (pixel star, limp broccoli, etc.) giving more than 1 HP per muscle point, boosting Muscle will also help.
  • Feed The Children (But Not Too Much) – look into Maximizing Your Muscle.
  • Build Playground Mazes – look into Maximizing Your Mysticality.
  • Feed Conspirators – look into Maximizing Your Moxie
  • Breed More Collies – 5 familiar level turns into 1 fewer adventures, so look into Maximizing Your Familiar Weight
  • Reduce Gazelle Population – look into Maximizing Your Weapon Damage
  • Make Sausage – look into Maximizing Your Spell Damage
  • Be a Living Statue – 5% less Combat Frequency turns into 3 fewer adventures, so look into Combat Frequency. The 25% cap does not apply for this test.
    • Throwing Some Shade and A Rose by Any Other Material used together will save 24 turns from this test.
  • Make Margaritas – look into Maximizing Your Item Drops. Booze drops count double.
  • Clean Steam Tunnels – 1 point hot resistance turns into 1 fewer adventures, so look into Maximizing Your Elemental Resistance
• There might be a clever way of doing ordering the tasks (A Rose by Any Other Material only helps with Be a Living Statue, so maybe do that one last?). Note that the Rose saves more turns in the Statue task than the silver face paint does in the Border Collies task, so always do Border Collies before Statue.

Relationship map of Community Service acts.

• • Of the eleven rewards, nine confer effects that assist with other tasks, which also last one adventure only. These are recommended only after you've adventured at the Barrel full of barrels enough for one day with plenty of food and booze as a result. The two remaining are the a ten-percent bonus which can be used immediately as it grants substats which are permanent, and the blood-drive sticker that is similar but can't be used until level 13.
• Council areas make up most of the usual combat areas, so it may be hard to find appropriate monsters to fight, or to find ingredients to cook or mix drinks with.
  • The Market Square still has some shops with combat quests, the Wrong Side of the Tracks has the The Overgrown Lot, The Big Mountains has the Dungeoneer's Association, and the Desert Beach (with a meatcar) are still available.
  • If under Degrassi Knoll moon signs, the bakery will allow you to make pies. However, it is not possible to make a meat maid without the smart skull from The Misspelled Cemetary.
  • It is still possible to access the Distant Woods, but it is unlocked via the Guild quest to White Citadel instead of the Level 2 quest.
  • Use of IOTM areas may help mitigate the shortages.
• It was originally harder to time semi-rares because of the chunks of time taken up by the tasks. This isn't the case any longer, due to semi-rares being changed to using clovers / the Lucky! status to access.
• Players often consider Hardcore to be more effective, due to the very low amount of pulls in softcore and thus similar run length on either difficulty, which is made up for by the higher HC rewards. For example, in softcore it is difficult to pull enough consumables for a proper diet.
• A 2-day walkthrough requiring only the Genie bottle and VIP key has been written by ILoath (#1935019). Also, there are now many scripts to run it in potentially 1-day on either Normal or Hardcore - check out instantSCCS as a starting point.

Notes

• While the rewards synergize well and allow you to complete the path faster, some of the rewards are quite valuable when sold in the mall, such as the blood-drive sticker, the emergency margarita, and the vintage smart drink. Players will often choose to not use some of these rewards, electing to keep and/or sell them instead.
• The blood-drive sticker was originally useable in-run, however with the change that made all L13+ consumables unusable while Hardcore and Ronin are active, it's now valid to use after the run.
• The only reward that must be used is a ten-percent bonus, as it is a quest item and will be removed from inventory after you ascend.
• In order to open up aftercore in the Community Service pathway, you must first click the button to Donate your body to science. When the next dialogue comes up asking you to confirm, DO NOT confirm. Instead change screens by clicking one of the toolbar icons, such as the main map. Note that areas unlocked by council quests will remain inaccessible, as described above.
  • Some things will remain unavailable in Community Service aftercore, such as the Dwarven Factory Quest.
• You cannot perform acts of community service if you're overdrunk.

Ascension Paths
Teetotaler	Boozetafarian	Oxygenarian
Special Challenge Paths
Spring Summer Fall Winter 2011 None Bees Hate You Way of the Surprising Fist Trendy 2012 Avatar of Boris Bugbear Invasion Zombie Slayer Class Act 2013 Avatar of Jarlsberg BIG! KOLHS Class Act II: A Class For Pigs 2014 Avatar of Sneaky Pete Slow and Steady Heavy Rains Picky 2015 Actually Ed the Undying One Crazy Random Summer Community Service None 2016 Avatar of West of Loathing The Source Nuclear Autumn None 2017 Gelatinous Noob License to Adventure Live. Ascend. Repeat. None 2018 Pocket Familiars G-Lover Disguises Delimit None 2019 Dark Gyffte Two Crazy Random Summer Kingdom of Exploathing None 2020 Path of the Plumber Low Key Summer Grey Goo None 2021 You, Robot Quantum Terrarium Wildfire None 2022 Grey You Journeyman Fall of the Dinosaurs None 2023 Avatar of Shadows Over Loathing Legacy of Loathing A Shrunken Adventurer Am I None 2024 WereProfessor 11 Things I Hate About U Avant Guard None