Hardcore IOTM Analysis
From TheKolWiki
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This guide is intended to serve as a checklist of past Items of the Month useful in Hardcore presented roughly in order of usefulness for no-path Hardcore ascension. Items' usefulness may vary wildly for challenge paths. If an item is not listed, it is either considered largely useless to Hardcore ascension or has not been added yet. The page currently considers up to April 2014.
Many Hardcore-usable IOTMs fulfil the same purpose as, or are mutually exclusive with, other items of the same "slot". It's generally a good idea to have Mr. Store items that cover each of these functions:
- Tomes: Three summons per day across all tomes. Makes for diminishing returns on additional tomes.
- Librams: Summons share an ever-increasing MP cost, and some libram summons synergize with summons from the same libram. See libram-specific notes.
- Garden: Only one seed can be planted at a time, and cannot be changed during a Hardcore run. Unless changing this across paths, you only need one.
- "Yellow rays": Also known as "disintegration", all sources of this bonus give you the "Everything Looks Yellow" effect, and thus do not stack.
- Spleen familiars: Familiars that drop turn-generating spleen items. Each has its own daily drop timer, so additional familiars make filling spleen easier, but you only need so many spleen items per day. Greatly diminished returns if you already have several spleen familiars.
- Runaway familiars: Familiars that let you flee combat without consuming a turn, which is used to advance many in-game counters. These familiars share the same counter (how much abuse your butt can take), and thus do not stack.
- Free combat familiars: Familiars that let you fight special monsters without consuming a turn, which grants lots of free stats, and also advances certain in-game counters. These familiars share the same fight counter, and thus do not stack.
- Monster-copying familiars: Familiars that let you target a monster while fighting it; the targeted monster will appear as a wandering monster 2-3 times following that encounter, letting you fight multiple copies of it.
All of these are color-coded by their availability under standard restrictions as follows:
| 2022 or older content | No longer available in in-season challenge paths. |
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| 2023 content | Will not be available in in-season challenge paths in 2026 or later. |
| 2024 content | Will not be available in in-season challenge paths in 2027 or later. |
| 2025 content | Will not be available in in-season challenge paths in 2028 or later. |
Contents
Tier lists
These tier lists provide an overview of the relative usefulness of each item. Items within the same tier are not necessarily listed in any comparative order. If you're using these tiers to help you decide what order to acquire these items in, feel free to move earlier to lower tiers if the mall cost is incredibly high for some in a higher tier.
 Items that are extremely badass
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| Item Name | Month Sold | Type | Description | |
| The Smith's Tome | Dec '13 | Tome | Deserving of an entire tier dedicated to just itself, this tome is a complete game changer and the #1 IOTM for Hardcore ascension by a significant margin. Each summon will grant you a flask, coal, and smithereens. The coal can be used to make very powerful equipment, many of which are best-in-slot, not just in Hardcore but in the entire game! The smithereens can be used for food or booze that either grant effects that make the equipment even better, or EPIC quality turngen; or a source of Yellow Ray, banishing, or an instant-kill with a large item drop bonus. And if you don't want the equipment, you can pulverise it for even more smithereens!
Every Flaskfull of Hollow grants 150 turns of Merry Smithsness, a buff which grants +25 Smithsness and an additional +1% to all stats for every point of Smithsness that you have. The lump of Brituminous coal can be smithed into A Light that Never Goes Out, an offhand which grants +5 Smithsness and an additional +1% item drop bonus for every point of Smithsness. Each lump of coal can also be crafted into a wide variety of class-specific weapons, which grant +5 Smithsness and an additional 2% to the weapon's class-appropriate main stat for every point of Smithsness. That accounts for two of the three pieces of coal you can summon in a day, and that coal accounts for three of nine things that you can summon in a day. In summary, this tome makes combat much easier, significantly speeds up levelling, gives huge item drop and meat drop bonuses, huge stat buffs, generates a significant amount of extra adventures and is also a potential source of yellow rays and banishing. And it will do most of these at the same time! Just make sure you choose a Degrassi Knoll moon sign for the free crafting and easy frilly skirt/maiden wig access. | |
 Items providing greatest overall utility
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| Item Name | Month Sold | Type | Description | |
| Clan VIP Lounge invitation | Recurring | Special | The Clan VIP Lounge key can provide (in rough order of usefulness):
Note: This rating is based on the assumption of a fully stocked VIP Lounge. It will still be awesome with just the Hot Tub and Fax Machine, just not as awesome. Make sure to check with your clan to find out if the furnishings that you want to use are available there, or get whitelisted to a clan that has the furniture. | |
| Chateau Mantegna room key | January '15 | Special | The bed recovers many more MP than any other housing, while the ceiling fan gives +5 free rests per day (unless you prefer +3 adventures or fites). The desk item can give 1000 meat per day (good, but obsoleted by the Deck of Every Card), a smattering of random potions (often useful, but varies wildly between run types), or fancy calligraphy pens (zero ascension relevance, intended for hearts). The nightstand item adds massive substat gains to those free rests, assuming you didn't accidentally jump the gash with the wrong one in. And the painting provides a first-day fax-alike (the only one that's still Standard legal) and a daily copy for the rest of your run. | |
| A spleen familiar | Various | Familiar | There are a lot of spleen familiars available, that help you generate adventures from your spleen, each with their own advantages or disadvantages. Check the Spleen Familiar Comparison for a better overview of which might be suitable for you. Note that all currently available spleen familiars have expired from standard restrictions, and Jick has expressed interest in letting turngen from spleen become entirely obsolete. | |
 Other powerful items that provide a lot of general utility
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| Item Name | Month Sold | Type | Description | |
| A Garden | Various | Garden | Gardens are a very powerful source of potential turn-gen and/or turn saving, but you can only have one active during an entire hardcore run, which massively depreciates the value of owning multiple different types. There are many gardens available, each with their own pros and cons, so it's recommended to look at the Garden Comparison at the bottom of the page and choose whichever you feel suits you best. If you intend to play under standard restrictions, note that your options are limited to the Pokéfam Guide to Capturing All of Them or the Better Shrooms and Gardens catalog, and Jick has expressed interest in letting the Garden slot become entirely obsolete. | |
| Your first Libram | Various | Libram | Librams let you convert excess MP into a range of useful items, but the costs of summoning increase with each summon and are shared between them. This makes owning multiple librams give diminishing returns. However, the first couple libram summons are incredibly cheap and so owning at least one libram can make a big difference to your runs. Please look at the Libram Comparison at the bottom of the page and choose whichever one you feel suits you best. Note that all currently existing Librams have expired from standard restrictions, and Jick has expressed interest in letting the Magical Bookshelf slots become entirely obsolete. | |
| a cute angel | Feb '11 | Familiar | (Copying familiars.) The Obtuse Angel and Reanimated Reanimator let you re-fight a monster 2-3 times, one of the few copying mechanisms available in HC. Saves many turns when used to acquire barrels of gunpowder and ninja climbing tools, along with various other useful targets. Can significantly speed up some Bounty Hunter Hunter hunts for those without Transcendent Olfaction. | |
| deanimated reanimator's coffin | Oct '13 | |||
| stuffed-shirt scarecrow | Nov' 11 | Familiar | The Fancypants Scarecrow can offer a wide variety of very useful enchantments without requiring much additional effort. With the frilly skirt equipped it acts as a quadruple-weight fairy capped at 8lbs (32lbs effective). With the double-ice britches it acts as a triple-weight leprechaun capped at 17lbs (51lbs effective). With the swashbuckling pants it is a triple-weight potato capped at 20lbs (60lbs effective). Finally, if you're willing to spend a fax and yellow ray on a sleepy mariachi, you can get a double-weight fairy capped at 37lbs (74lbs effective). This familiar is particularly useful when you lack lots of familiar weight buffs.
Note: The Mad Hatrack may look similar at first glance, as it shares the double-weight fairy/potato enchantment with the spangly sombrero equipped. However, it lacks any other useful and easily accessible enchantments with the same level of utility as the scarecrow. As such it is not a recommended purchase. | |
| Schmalz's First Prize Beer | Aug '10 | Familiar | (Free combat familiars.) The Mini-Hipster and Artistic Goth Kid provide free combats with scaling monsters, an excellent source of stat gains. These free combats also count towards any minimum turn requirements in a zone despite not costing an adventure, allowing you to speed up some zones such as The Spooky Forest or The Penultimate Fantasy Airship, which require you to adventure in the zone a certain number of times before quest related non-combats are available. In the desert the free combats still count towards exploration and can drop worm-riding manual pages. The Hipster also provides a flat +3 stats or +25% items from its free equipment and can attack for massive damage, and the Goth Kid generates PvP fights. | |
| Moping Artistic Goth Kid | Jun '12 | |||
 Strong items with narrower utility
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| Item Name | Month Sold | Type | Description | |
| dreaming Jung man | 2013 | Familiar | Getting the digital key can take quite a lot of turns. One way to speed it up to to fax and copy a ghost, but an even better way is to use the Angry Jung Man for 30 turns until he drops a psychoanalytic jar, then use it on The Crackpot Mystic to access Fear Man's Level and fight morbid skulls. This saves both a fax and copy, as well as a significant number of turns. | |
| floaty stone sphere | Aug '09 | Familiar | Yellow rays are extremely powerful, and the He-Boulder is one source of them. By this stage you can already access yellow rays from your tome summons, but using the He-Boulder instead will let you save your smithereens for something else. In addition, the He-Boulder's unique equipment will reduce the cool-down time from 150 turns to 100, letting you get in an extra yellow ray each day. You can also use its red ray for a small stat gain boost. | |
| suspicious stocking | Dec '09 | Familiar | Primarily used for the low chance of dropping Polka Pops at the end of a fight, which gives ten turns of a massive amount of meat and item drops. Also useful for giving tons of MP and BitterSweetTarts which give many stats per fight. Can be very swingy with its drops. | |
| KoLHS Pep Squad Box | Sep '13 | Familiar | For the first 25 turns per day the Steam-Powered Cheerleader is a fairy at 1.4 times the weight. For the next 25 turns its at 1.3 times weight. After that the Jumpsuited Hound Dog beats it. At its most useful when you have access to a lot of familiar weight boosts (to beat the Fancypants Scarecrow with a frilly skirt equipped) and are in a zone where you don't need +combat (such as The F'c'le, where the hound dog is better overall). | |
| panicked kernel | Apr '10 | Familiar | By visiting The Cake-Shaped Arena with the Baby Bugged Bugbear active, you'll get its unique equipment for free which can be folded into a bugged balaclava. This makes the familiar act as a volleyball and potato while also giving +20 ML, making give quite a lot of stats if you can survive the extra ML. The ML can also help speed up areas that benefit from more ML, such as The Defiled Cranny and Oil Peak. | |
| Camp Scout backpack | Jul '12 | Special | Receive various items after every so many combats, even with the backpack in Hagnk's. While you may not hit the epic-quality food every day, the fire-starting kit is amazing for quality of life, and you can't say no to 300 meat, 20 turns of +30 to all attributes and great filler booze. The MP regeneration in particular can save a fair amount of meat and shouldn't be under-estimated. Best of all, it doesn't compete with anything else. | |
| Order of the Green Thumb Order Form | May '13 | Florist | Allows you to plant flowers in zones that passively grant powerful bonuses in that zone for the rest of the ascension. Most useful are the item drop, +stat gains, +ml and mp regen plants. Unfortunately it can only be used a few times each day and is easy to forget, but on the plus side does not compete with anything else. | |
| organ grinder | Oct '10 | Familiar | The Knob Goblin Organ Grinder is a leprechaun that provides awesome-quality food that grants 20 turns of +2 mainstat/fight, as long as you use it against bosses. These make excellent filler food as they are only 2 fullness. | |
| fairy-worn boots | Aug '11 | Familiar | (free runaway familiars.) These familiars can let you runaway from fights you don't want to reroll a chance at a non-combat or to burn down minimum adventure requirements in zones. The number of runaways you can get is based on the buffed weight of the familiar, and so it requires access to a lot of sources of familiar weight buffs until they start to save an appreciable number of turns, but are very powerful if you can achieve this. The Pair of Stomping Boots can double up as a spleen familiar and the Frumious Bandersnatch requires Ode to Booze to be active to get the runaways, making the boots the better of the two. | |
| Apathargic Bandersnatch | Mar '09 | |||
| Small Medium | Mar '12 | Familiar | The Happy Medium is a full-weight volleyball and half-weight oily woim that can make a variety of two drunkenness booze that gives higher adventures-per-drunkenness than stilled disco bandit cocktails. These boozes also provide a variety of strong buffs based on the phylum of the monster siphoned, the most practical of which are high elemental damage for skipping non-combats in the tavern (horrors and demons), and +50% inititative (bugs). The charge time to get the drinks increases with each drink made that day so don't expect to make many. The utility of this familiar is even higher in some special challenge paths. | |
 Items that are nice to have
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| Item Name | Month Sold | Type | Description | |
| GameInformPowerDailyPro subscription card | Feb '13 | Eudora | Each day this will let you pick up a dungeoneering kit for free, which contains a soft green echo eyedrop antidote, which allows you to use Transcendent Olfaction more often. The other scrolls inside the kit also help survive strong battles early on, such as The Haunted Bedroom, or to survive A-Boo clues, or to pass elemental resistance requirements. It's also an easy source of scaling monsters, useful for powerlevelling, and an alternative source of fat loot tokens, although it takes more turns to get them this way than via The Daily Dungeon. The scrolls are typically more useful when you have fewer skills permed. | |
| deactivated nanobots | Nov '12 | Familiar | While the Nanorhino can provide yellow rays like the He-Boulder, the main reason to pick it up is to gain a full-day banish once per day. This banish requires access to a muscle combat guild skill (or Toss/Clobber) to use. While this banish frees up a tome use/smithereens or lets you stack multiple banishes, banishes that are not also free runaways do not save many turns. | |
| Little Geneticist DNA-Splicing Lab | April '14 | Workshed | A handy little workshed item, the Little Geneticist DNA-Splicing Lab provides an intrinsic that can be changed daily, and the creation of three potions per day. To get the most out of it, a fax is required, but the meat, item, and elemental damage buffs can all help to save a few turns over your run. It has some rather strong competition from the far less expensive snow machine (if you have a garden item) and the warbear induction oven (if you don't). | |
| A second Libram | Various | Libram | While libram summons get more and more expensive with each cast, it's easy to fit in enough summons to get a wider variety of benefits. Keep in mind that some librams love lots and lots of summons, while others benefit more from only a few. Pick carefully, and consult the Libram Comparison to help make up your mind. | |
| A second Tome | Various | Tome | The Smith's Tome may be all-powerful, but you usually have enough summons spare across an ascension to dip into other tomes to get some more niche utility. Consult the Tome Comparison to help figure out which other tome suits you best. | |
 Items with extremely minor use, or those that struggle to compete
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| Item Name | Month Sold | Type | Description | |
| hibernating Grimstone Golem | 2014 | Familiar | A fairychaun that drops a grimstone mask, which can take you to The Prince's Ball where you can spend turns collecting odd silver coins. These can be traded in to speed up building the bridge above The Orc Chasm or exploring the desert. The problem: it takes at least 40 turns using this familiar until the mask drops, and it's very very difficult to fit in enough uses of the familiar to get the mask while it's still useful. If you are a PvP player this familiar is all but essential. Using a mask will give you access to the Inner Wolf Gym for the workoutfit and high-quality pvp consumables. Unfortunately monsters from the Wolf Gym are not copyable, so you must have this familiar to get access to the workoutfit's 10 daily rollover fights. | |
| glowing frisbee | Jun '10 | Familiar | While you won't be using the Rogue Program to generate spleen, his Game Grid tokens can be traded in for finger cuffs and the little parachute guy, the latter which can be useful for MP restoration. | |
| Sorcerers of the Shore Grimoire | Mar '11 | Grimoire | Gives you a daily Ye Wizard's Shack snack voucher, which is good for 15 turns of Kill Everything Mode. Generally only needed to pull off weird strategies or kill really hard enemies. | |
| More Librams! | Various | Libram | Need even more niche utility? Diversify your portfolio! New librams that benefit from lots of summons are questionable at this stage. | |
| More Tomes! | Various | Tome | If a tome you don't have can provide some useful niche utility and you can spare the summon, then consider getting it, but more than 3 tomes is pushing it, and you never know how brokenly overpowered the next one to be released will be... | |
Comparison Tables
Some mechanics that share a "slot" benefit from additional analysis. Items within these tables are listed roughly in order of usefulness.
Spleen Familiar Comparison
 Familiars that generate many turns per day by filling your spleen
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| Item Name | Month Sold | Description | ||
| fairy-worn boots | Aug '11 | The Pair of Stomping Boots is a fairy that can smash enemies into pastes. The pastes have a level 4 requirement, generate 5-10 adventures, give ~20 of each stat and various buffs based on the type of enemy killed, although they are mostly just a minor boon. However, generating the paste requires you to forfeit all stats and item drops from the monster. This familiar also grants free runaways based on its buffed weight, getting you two-for-one on useful mechanics, making it very good value, even though it's not the strictly best spleen familiar. | ||
| Avatar of the Unconscious Collective | 2013 | The Unconscious Collective is a volleychaun that drops Unconscious Collective Dream Jars. The jars have no level requirement, generate 5-10 adventures and give ~25 of each stat. It also provides 3 free rests per day even if it never leaves your terrarium. | ||
| praying Grim Brother | 2014 | The Grim Brother is a volleychaun that drops Grim fairy tales. The fairy tales have no level requirement, generate 5-10 adventures and give ~25 of each stat. It also provides 30 turns of a minor buff (initiative, HP/MP, or weapon/spell damage) once per day. A point worth mentioning, although it is not Hardcore relevant, is that this familiar has additional use for softcore and aftercore by giving +combat when placed in the Crown of Thrones or Buddy Bjorn. | ||
| The Groose in the Hoose | 2012 | The Bloovian Groose is a volleychaun that drops groose grease. The grease has no level requirement, generates 5-10 adventures and gives ~25 to each stat. | ||
| glowing frisbee | Jun '10 | The Rogue Program is a starfish that drops Game Grid tokens, which can be turned into 10 tickets (via the Broken Skee-Ball Machine) and traded for coffee pixie sticks. The sticks have a level 4 requirement, generate 5-10 adventures and give no stats. When not trading in the tickets for pixie sticks, they can be used for finger cuffs, which are a cheap source for multi-round stuns, or little parachute guys for extra HP/MP restore. | ||
| infant sandworm | Jun '09 | The Baby Sandworm is a sombrero that drops agua de vida. This has a level 4 requirement, generates 5-10 adventures and gives no stats (and opens some non-speed-relevant content). | ||
| llama lama cria | Jun '08 | The Llama Lama is a half-weight volleyball that drops llama lama gongs. These can be used to get Form of...Bird!, which can generate a glimmering roc feather after 15 turns. These feathers have a level 4 requirement, generate 6-10 adventures and give ~25 of each stat. Unfortunately, there is a chance to fail generating the roc feather when adventuring in areas with lots of non-combats, and doing so can be quite MP intensive (and likely to get you Beaten Up because your human combat skills are all unavailable). Due to the sheer effort involved in obtaining the feathers, using this familiar to generate spleen items is not recommended.
The gongs can also be used for powerlevelling via Form of...Cockroach! (with a +item or +ML buff at the end), and bird form can also generate other feathers that give powerful buffs for 1 spleen. | ||
| bottled green pixie | Jun '07 | The Green Pixie is a fairy that drops tiny bottles of absinthe. These allow you to adventure in The Worm Wood, and by adventuring in the right places at the right time, you can receive a not-a-pipe. The pipes have a level 4 requirement, generate 4-12 adventures and give ~25 to each stat. As it costs 3-6 turns minimum to collect the pipes, undoing most of their benefit, using this familiar to generate spleen items is not recommended. | ||
Garden Comparison
 Gardens grow various crops in your campground. They cannot be swapped during a hardcore ascension.
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| Item Name | Month Sold | Description | ||
| Better Shrooms and Gardens catalog | March '20 | TBA | ||
| Pokéfam Guide to Capturing All of Them | March '18 | TBA | ||
| Granny Tood's Thanksgarden Catalog | Nov '16 | TBA | ||
| Discontent™ Winter Garden Catalog | Jan '14 | The main benefit of this garden is its flexibilty, providing many combinations of turn cutting and turn generating abilities. It gives you 3 snow berries and 3 ice harvests per day, and if you leave it alone for 3 days, a frost flower as well. It synergises particularly well with the snow machine workshed item when not going for a frost flower. Its turn cutting options are quite powerful, primarily the snow cleats for -combats, the snow boards to speed up building the bridge above The Orc Chasm, and the unfinished ice sculpture to copy one monster per day. Its turn generating options are flexible but generally lower quality than the other gardens, with the snow crab only granting a single point of fullness at epic quality. However, the Ice Island Long Tea is a reasonable nightcap and the berries and harvests can be eaten directly. | ||
| Pete & Jackie's Dragon Tooth Emporium Catalog | Oct '12 | This garden generates 5 skeletons per day. The primary use of this garden is to unlock access to the island via the skeletal skiff, which requires 7 skeletons. This was much more useful before an update to the game reduced the number of shore trips needed to unlock the island from 5 to 3. The skeleton quiche gives two fullness of epic quality food for only 3 of your 5 daily skeletons, letting you make one alongside the skiff. The crystal skeleton vodka (5 skeletons) gives 3 drunkenness of epic quality booze with an item drop and ML buff. | ||
| Mint Salton Pepper's Peppermint Seed Catalog | Dec '11 | When it comes to turngen this garden is unmatched. You get 3 Peppermint sprouts per day, each directly convertible into a peppermint twist that can be mixed with base bottles of booze for a total of 6 drunkenness of epic quality booze. However, this does require getting enough basic booze bottles to cover each day's use. It also offers some turn cutting options, primarily a free runaway item (5 sprouts) and guaranteed pickpocket (3 sprouts). In longer runs, the parasols may cut more turns than any other garden option. Can be very useful in some special challenge paths. | ||
| Gordon Beer's Beer Garden Catalog | KoL Con 2013+ | Each day your crops can be traded in for 3 1-drunkenness beers that give quite high stat gains to a particular stat. If you're willing to leave the garden unharvested for at least 3 days you can gain a single 2-drunkenness beer to replace one of the 1-drunkenness ones. By leaving the garden for a massive 7 days you can get an artisanal homebrew gift package that might give you beers with large item or meat drop bonuses in time for the war sidequests, if your ascension is particularly slow. However, frost flowers from the winter garden give the same bonuses but are easier to get, leaving this garden largely outclassed. | ||
| Grumpy Bumpkin's Pumpkin Seed Catalog | Nov '10 | The original garden and now generally outclassed, it provides a single pumpkin per day. Its only useful turncutting option is the pumpkin bomb, which is a yellow ray source that requires you to farm up a Knob Goblin firecracker, making it the worst yellow ray source. It is marginally the best garden for pure turngen from food, giving three fullness of epic quality food per day via the pumpkin pie, and the pumpkin beer epic quality booze comes in the form of three individual one drunkenness drinks, which can offer flexibility. | ||
Tome Comparison
 Skills that summon powerful things. Limited to 3 uses per day total across all of them.
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| Item Name | Month Sold | Description | ||
| The Smith's Tome | Dec '13 | See the main entry in the top Tier for why this tome is so powerful. A must-have that strongly outclasses all other tomes, with only niche exceptions. | ||
| Tome of Sugar Shummoning | Sep '09 | The primary use for this tome these days is the sugar shield, familiar equipment that lasts 30 turns and gives +10 familiar weight. Useful for extra free-runaways, the nuns, situational item drop boosts and beating the Sorceress's familiars. | ||
| Tome of Clip Art | Sep '11 | This tome can generate one out of a massive pool of items. The box of Familiar Jacks can give you any familiar's unique familiar equipment at no turn cost, useful for the He-Boulder and Obtuse Angel. The borrowed time can help you finish the ascension if you run out of turns at the Sorceress's Tower. The bucket of wine is a very powerful nightcap when combined with Ode to Booze. The time halo gives 5 adventures per day, and if you're fighting unarmed, the shining halo is 3 stats per fight, the frosty halo is +25% items, the furry halo is +5 familiar weight. The unbearable light is a yellow ray and the crystal skull is a 20-turn banisher. The Ur-Donut can give lots of stats on day 1 to kick-start your ascension.
This tome was much more useful before The Smith's Tome occupied your hand slots while simultaneously providing a yellow-ray or banish source for the same summon, but the jacks, borrowed time and time halo still have utility. | ||
| Tome of Rad Libs | KoL Con 2012+ | The primary use for this tome is to spend two summons to get Papier-mâché toothpicks, which give 40 turns of +50% meat and +25% items. This is equivalent to a farily lucky two summons of the sticker tome without requiring your weapon slot and without any randomness. Managing to find room for two tome summons can be very tricky. | ||
| Scratch 'n' Sniff Sticker Tome | Nov '08 | Very swingy, each summon provides three stickers. You also get a weapon that holds up to three of them, and each sticker lasts for 20 turns. The first sticker is +2 stats per fight or +25% items. The second is +10% to all stats or +25% meat. The third is +10 spell and weapon damage or +15 prismatic damage. While these stickers can be stacked for huge item or meat drop bonuses, it can take a lot of summons to get enough of the correct type of sticker. Requiring the use of your weapon slot conflicts with The Smith's Tome. | ||
| Tome of Snowcone Summoning | Jan '06 | Very swingy and totally outclassed by all other tomes at this point. If this is the only tome you own, consider upgrading, as all other tomes are a better use of your limited daily summons. While the individual snowcone effects are quite powerful, it is a crapshoot as to whether or not you will get the buff you want. | ||
Libram Comparison
 Skills that summon things. MP costs rise with each use, and is shared between all librams.
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| Item Name | Month Sold | Description | ||
| Libram of Resolutions | Jan '12 | Each summon generates a resolution, most of which grant 20 turns of a buff. There are 9 in total, although 3 are significantly rarer than the others. The 6 common ones are +2 muscle per fight, +2 myst per fight, +2 moxie per fight, +15% item drops, +30% meat drops, and +20 weapon and spell damage. The three rarer summons are +5 familiar weight, +2 adventures at rollover, and "bonus luck". While this libram can be somewhat swingy, with half of the common summons being significantly better than the others (items, meat and mainstat), the buffs do last for a long time and are quite powerful. | ||
| Libram of Divine Favors | Jan '08 | This libram has two types of summon, common ones and rare ones. The rare summons initially have a 50% chance of appearing but this chance halves each time you get a rare summon that day. The common summons are one of three combat items that deal physical dmage equal to your buffed stats (one for each stat). The rare summons are a one-use pickpocket with bonus drop chance, MP restore when drinking booze, and a 5-turn banish that's also a free runaway. The latter item is very powerful and is pretty much the sole reason why you want to summon from this libram. Due to the decreasing chance of receiving one, it's advised you summon from this libram until your first or second rare, then swap to other librams for the rest of the day. | ||
| Libram of Pulled Taffy | Apr '13 | Summons a single taffy from a pool of 7, 4 of which are more common. These can be used as potions or combat items, but can only be used in combat in The Sea, meaning that they only have use as potions during Hardcore ascensions. The potions give a number of useful buffs, the 4 common ones being +familiar weight and bonus stat gains (one for each stat). The uncommon ones are HP regen, MP regen and both +items and +meat at the same time. Each buff lasts for 10 turns and scales with the number of turns remaining, but can be stacked for larger boosts, capped at 50 turns. In general the Libram of Resolutions is better value per summon but this libram can get you easier access to lots of familiar weight and if you are able and willing to pump lots of MP into it can get you very powerful boosts. More useful the less other librams you have. | ||
| Libram of BRICKOs | Feb '10 | This libram summons BRICKO bricks that can be multi-used en masse to construct a number of things. The primary use in hardcore ascensions is to create BRICKO monsters which you can fight at no turn cost, generating you stats. These fights are different from other free combats in that they can be copied, if you have the copies spare, which can ultimately lead to a fair amount of free stats. Has niche use, and requires lots and lots of summons to get the most out of it. | ||
| Libram of Candy Heart Summoning | Feb '07 | Each summon gives you one of 6 candy hearts, each granting 10 turns of a minor buff, as well as +3 to each stat. This was much more useful when the game used to not let you adventure in a zone until you had an arbitrary amount of buffed main stat, as the +3 stat from each type of heart could be stacked together. Now that is no longer the case, the boosts are totally outclassed by the Libram of Resolutions and you are unlikely to summon from this libram. | ||
| Libram of Love Songs | Feb '09 | Each summon gives one of 6 love songs, which can be used either as a scaling combat item (similar to those from the Libram of Divine Favors) or as a scaling potion, (similar to those from the Libram of Pulled Taffy). However, the scaling potion effect is worse than those from the taffy, leaving this libram totally outclassed. The combat damage is elemental and so used to have a niche use against physically resistant monsters before every class gained skills that let them deal elemental damage. It no longer has any practical use during a hardcore ascension as other alternatives are much better. | ||
| Gygaxian Libram | KoL Con 2011+ | Summons one die from a pool of 6 types. These have almost no practical benefits in-run barring some crappy restoration potions that might cost more to summon than they restore. | ||
See Also
| Ascension Strategy | |
| Rankings: | HC Skills - HC Familiars - HC IotMs |
| General: | Class selection - Familiar usage - Lucky adventures |
| Paths: | BHY - Fist - AoB - BI - ZS - AoJ - BIG! - KOLHS - CA2 - AoSP - SS - HR - Picky - Ed - Random - AoWoL - Source - NA - GN - LtA - L.A.R. - PF - G-Lover - DD |
| Additional Paths: | DG - 2CRS - KoE - PotP - LKS - GG - Y,Robot - QT - WF - GY - JM - FotD |
| IotMs: | Tomes - Faxing - Copying - YR - Garden - Correspondent - Workshed - Tea party - Florist |
