Lingo
From TheKolWiki
This page is an attempt at covering all the terms you'll see dealing with the community of Kingdom of Loathing. There's a lot of terms specific to this game and borrowed from other games used in regular discussions, so if you feel a bit lost in a conversation, this should help you gain your bearings.
Common names
These are common nouns used by players to discuss certain elements in-game.
Stats
- Refers to Muscle, Mysticality, and Moxie.
Substats
- Refers to the stat points that you gain from combat, eating, drinking, some non-combat adventures, etc. Substats are like experience points for your stats - when you gain enough of a substat, your primary stat increases.
- Referred to by many names in-game, such as Muscleboundness, Enchantedness, and Chutzpah.
Mainstat
- Refers to the stat which determines your level. Which stat is your main stat is based on your class. For example, the main stat for a Seal Clubber is Muscle.
Offstats
- Refers to stats other than your Mainstat. For example, for Seal Clubbers, Moxie and Mysticality are offstats.
Init
- Shorthand for Combat Initiative.
Avatar
- Refers to the three Avatar challenge classes, Avatar of Boris, Avatar of Jarlsberg and Avatar of Sneaky Pete.
- Also refers to any image of your character in-game, or on the forums.
Shrug
- To voluntarily remove a buff by right-clicking on its icon and confirming that you want to shrug it off.
- Since each character can have a limited number of Accordion Thief songs, players will often shrug one song to free up a slot for another one.
- Other effects which are typically shrugged include 'buffs' that only provide no meaningful bonus such as Just the Best Anapests.
Perm
- To make a skill permanently available in all future Normal or Casual ascensions by spending Karma in Jermery's Permery in Beyond the Pale.
- To HC perm (sometimes "hardperm") costs double the Karma, but makes the skill available in Hardcore ascensions as well.
- Both terms are occasionally also used as nouns, referring to the particular skills a player has made permanent this way. (e.g. "I'm going to pick up Pastamastery as my next perm.")
Type69
- Type69 refers to standard restrictions, which disallow using older limited-time content items in Standard ascensions and the current special challenge path.
Wang
- "To wang someone" means to use the wang item on them, granting the target the benefit of a basic text corrector in chat for the next 100 Adventures.
- This will also suppress the preposition-changing effect of the sword behind inappropriate prepositions and the word substitution effect of the staph of homophones.
- The item name refers to the Wang computer company, which specialized in word-processing hardware and software. There is absolutely nothing else going on here.
Shiny
- A shiny is an item obtained from the Mr. Store, which are purchased in exchange for Mr. Accessories, which are usually obtained by donating.
- It might also refer to otherwise expensive or difficult-to-obtain items, such as Rare Items.
- Shiny as an adjective can be used to mean untradeable and limited supply, such as the mysterious silver lapel pin, the Order of the Silver Wossname or the Easter egg balloon.
Strategies
Delay
- The amount of turns which must be spent in a zone before certain specific adventures can happen. These adventures are typically ones which are required to progress in certain quests. See delay().
- A subterm of this is delay burning, which is to either use things which count as a turn spent in the zone but cost no adventures, to spend fewer turns; or, which give better adventures in the required zone, to make better use of the turns that are spent.
Sniff/Olfact
- Terms for using skills or items which increase the frequency of encountering a specific monster of a given name typically expressed in-game as catching the scent of that monster.
- Important in increasing overall chance of getting a particular encounter, often to obtain a specific item drop or complete a quest. For example, sniffing dairy goats to obtain goat cheese for the Mt. McLargeHuge Quest.
- Sources include Transcendent Olfaction and Nosy Nose's Get a Good Whiff of This Guy skill, and both the Avatar of Sneaky Pete and Avatar of Jarlsberg have their own special skills similar to this. You can also use an odor extractor which does the same as Transcendent Olfaction as a one-shot item, but it's almost always better to save the filthy lucre you would spend on the extractor to save up for Olfaction.
Banish
- All effects that remove a monster from a zone. See banishing.
- Important in maximizing your chances of seeing a given monster by making other choices less likely. For example, banishing sabre-toothed goats during the Mt. McLargeHuge Quest makes dairy goats relatively more common.
- Sources include the Seal Clubber skill Batter Up!, the ice house item, and several items and skills specific to various special challenge paths.
Plinking
- A strategy where you set your moxie high enough to not take much damage from monsters in a given area and then slowly kill them with weak attacks and items, which maximize the number of rounds of combat.
- Important in getting more out of Cocoabo type and Starfish type familiars, as well as other per-combat-round effects.
Outmoxie
- Having enough moxie to render most enemies' attacks into misses.
- Invaluable to survivability.
- Maximizing Your Moxie will help with this.
Tune/Tuning/Attune
- Term for using skills which deal damage of multiple (or random) Elements, and forcing them to deal damage of only one element, usually either via equipment, through the skill Flavour of Magic, or by using phials.
- Important for dealing high damage with less MP, especially against enemies with elemental weaknesses.
- Monsters without elemental weaknesses can be given elemental weaknesses by using items such as shard of double-ice or ingot turtle.
Arrow
- Refers to using a familiar skill to make extra copies of a monster. Either the Fire a badly romantic arrow skill of the Obtuse Angel or Wink at (Familiar Name) skill of the Reanimated Reanimator will have this effect. After using either of these skills in combat, the monster you're fighting will re-appear as a wandering monster.
- Important in making sure certain combats happen multiple times, without having to be in the zone they'd normally require. For example, if you arrow a lobsterfrogman, you can fight a copy of it in the The Penultimate Fantasy Airship, thus obtaining a barrel of gunpowder while burning the delay before you can receive F-F-Fantastic! - working towards completing two quests at once.
- Certain other elements of progression might not be moved forward, such as desert exploration or progress in unlocking places in the Black Forest.
Wandering Monsters
- Refers to enemy encounters that happen regardless of what adventure zone is being adventured in, usually as part of a holiday such as the Feast of Boris or El Dia de Los Muertos Borrachos, the Me and My Nemesis quest, or as a result of arrowing a monster. See wandering monsters.
- They replace other adventures in zones, thus potentially being a good way to increase your delay burn.
Copy
- Refers effects that can let you make a copy of a monster in combat to fight it later. See copying.
- Important in seeing a monster with certainty multiple times.
- Similar to arrowing, except that you can control when to fight the copy of the monster, but the fight occurs in a zone that is not a normal adventure zone, so it doesn't help burn delay.
Faxing
- A version of copying that is done outside of combat and thus lets you make a copy of a monster without having to fight it first.
- Important in making sure you have a monster available outside of when you'd normally see it, for example, fighting lobsterfrogmans before starting the Mysterious Island Quest, or fighting a sleepy mariachi while not being on the Me and My Nemesis quest (or even being an Accordion Thief. Also, compounds the effectiveness of arrowing and/or copying.
- The skill Rain Man from Heavy Rains and the fax machine are the two current sources available. Rain Man lets you make a copy of monsters which you have in your Monster Manuel or that you've met in a Heavy Rains run. The fax machine is dependent on your or another player getting a copy of the monster into the fax machine first, although you can address this via a Faxbot.
Free runaway
- All effects that let you escape combat without a turn cost.
- Important in getting through delay in areas where adventuring otherwise isn't optimal.
- Major sources of these are glob of Blank-Out, divine champagne popper, Frumious Bandersnatch, Pair of Stomping Boots, Greatest American Pants, Navel ring of navel gazing, peppermint parasol, amongst quite a few more. However, keep in mind that most are not available in current challenge paths due to Standard restrictions.
Tatter/Tatters
- Nickname for tattered scrap of paper, the most commonly available free runaway method which can be used en masse to do certain tasks without using your turns. It has a 50/50 shot at working or doing nothing, which means you need a lot of tatters to do much of anything.
- Important in maximizing opportunities where you need pickpocket-only items or are seeking to only spend turns on certain adventures within an event or similar. For example, if you are trying to turn an unstable fulminate into a wine bomb, only fighting monstrous boilers in The Haunted Boiler Room will help - using tatters (or other free runaways, or banishers) to avoid spending adventures fighting coaltergeists and steam elementals will allow you to spend those adventures more productively.
Free fights
- Combats which do not consume turns.
- Includes fights generated by Mini-Hipster or Artistic Goth Kid familiars, or items such as BRICKO and infernal seals.
- An important source of stats, and in the case of familiar-based fights, burning delay.
Yellow Ray
- Any effect which instantly kills a monster and forces all non-conditional items to drop.
- Is restricted in use by the Everything Looks Yellow effect.
- Sources of these include He-Boulder's yellow-eyed gaze (Yellow Optical Ray of Item Dropping Sexiness, or YOROIDS), Summon Clip Art's unbearable light, Summon Smithsness's Golden Light, getting Nanoballsy from a Nanorhino and using Unleash Nanites and many more.
Stunning
- Refers to actions that prevent a monster from acting for several or more rounds. See Stunning.
Staggering
- Similar to stunning but for the current round only, usually as part of another effect. See Stunning.
- An important note - increasing Monster Level gives creatures resistance to Stunning and Staggering, but the amount of +ML required to give Stun resistance is much lower than the amount required to give Stagger resistance. Thus, Staggers are usually more valuable, assuming you are running a moderate amount of +ML.
ML
- Used to refer to Monster Level; both the base level of the monster and items or effects which increase the level of monsters.
- Using +ML effects increases the amount of substats gained from combat, more than an increase in base ML would. So a fighting a monster with 50 base attack at +50 ML will be worth more substats than fighting a monster with 100 base attack at +0 ML.
- Using +ML effects also gives monsters special abilities, above and beyond the increased stats it gives them; damage resistance, passive elemental damage, stun and stagger resistance, depending on the level of +ML.
- Certain areas have special interactions with +ML effects; for example, running +ML in The Defiled Cranny or Oil Peak will help you complete quests in those zones faster.
Combat modifiers
- Used interchangeably to describe effects that make monsters more or less attracted to you to modify the frequency you see combats or non-combats, respectively.
- Has many different nicknames: +Com, -Com, +C, +NC,
- See Combat Frequency.
Familiar types
For examples of these familiar types, please see the Familiars by type page.
If you see an amalgam name of the types below to describe a familiar, it means it has both of those abilities, generally at full weight although some exist that are partial or increased in weight calculation.
Attack
- Any familiar which attacks. Most use a sabre-toothed lime formula, though there are plenty that don't.
Volley
- Increases combat substat gains like a Blood-Faced Volleyball, i.e. based only on the weight of the familiar, using a linear function.
Sombrero
- Increases combat substat gains like a Hovering Sombrero, i.e. based on the weight of the familiar and the level of the monster, using a quadratic function.
Chaun
- Increases meat gains like a Leprechaun.
Fairy
- Increases item drops like a Baby Gravy Fairy.
Barnacle
- Decreases enemy stats like a Barrrnacle at the start of combat. Like all in-combat deleveling, does not decrease substat gains from combat.
Potato
- Blocks enemy attacks like a Levitating Potato.
Ghoul
- Heals HP and MP at the end of combat like a Ghuol Whelp.
Mosquito
- Deals damage and restores HP like a Mosquito.
Cocoabo
- Performs a variety of actions like a Cocoabo.
Starfish
- Deals damage and restores MP like a Star Starfish.
Spleen
- Drops an item that you can use to gain extra adventures (and possibly substats) but damages your spleen.
Drop
- Drops a specific item (or set of items). Usually not also used for those in the Spleen category.
Random cultural lingo
Bartle Test Type
- What sort of player you are, sometimes determined by a multiple choice test. The four categories are:
- Heart: Player involvement oriented -- hearts want to love.
- Diamond: Collectors and achievement-hunters -- diamonds want to shine.
- Spade: Discoverers of mechanics and secrets -- spades want to dig.
- Club: Seeks conflict with other players, usually in PvP or other competitions -- clubs want to hit people.
Spading
- Refers to the act of figuring out game mechanics, also taken from the name of Spade from the Bartle test.
Mafia
- Refers to KoLMafia, an external tool to the game that helps with automation and time management.
Baleet
- An alternate term for ignore which originated from Homestar Runner's use of the word as an alternative to deleted.
Griefing
- To impede another player's progress via various actions.
Huggler
- Someone who both griefs and is a Heart, which is possible.
Dickstabber
- A term coined by the devs of Kingdom of Loathing, to mean someone who will do something completely unfun for the most minute advantages.
- Originates in a radio show, where Jick characterized a certain playstyle as a non-choice between "fucking the prom queen for ten points or stabbing yourself in the dick for eleven because, hey, free point."
Common acronyms
For a more comprehensive list, see Acronyms. This is for the more common ones you'll see in day-to-day conversations.
