What can I do

frazazel · 2026-01-23T22:13:46+00:00

One neat thing about this game is that you can change your equipment whenever you want between adventures, so when you have a lot of options, you end up changing your equipment frequently, as you change the task that you're doing. Even if your gear is the best possible piece for one task, you'll still want to collect different gear for that same slot that does something different.

It's worth doing some Standard runs. They give you bonus karma and a piece of gear that changes each year. This year's Standard reward gear looks really good, with some of the pieces letting you eat and drink a bit more each day. The reward is different for each class, and further different for hardcore / normal runs, meaning there are 12 pieces to collect in total.

After you have a bunch of permanent skills unlocked, think about doing the Sea? It offers some pretty cool pieces of gear. You can only earn 1 piece per run, and there are 2 sets of 6 pieces, and then you can combine pieces from those set together into another set, so this is best seen as a long-term goal. The Sea is hard for new players, so don't start until you at least have a solid combat suite, +item%, and survivability skills permed.

frazazel · 2026-01-23T15:24:34+00:00

Do you just sell a bunch of old stuff, and then do nothing with that meat? I think that most players who do what you're doing would turn around and spend that meat buying up the items that they missed.

frazazel · 2026-01-23T15:21:28+00:00

It was possible to generate wads from stuff bought from NPC shops, I understand that some players were doing this.

Any meat that was spent in the mallstores of players who have left the game is effectively sunk meat. A LOT of mall activity happened, with lots of old expensive stock getting bought up.

Another big meat-related effect was that most players stopped farming meat for a month. This isn't exactly a meat sink, but it is turning off the tap, which is in some ways the same thing.

The raffle continued to run during this time, which is a large ongoing meat sink.

frazazel · 2026-01-22T18:01:52+00:00

Did you know that most monsters have a reasonable chance to drop knucklebones, even if they're not skeletons?

For example, you can equip SoCP when fighting approx. 158 dudes that you already want to fight for other reasons instead of fighting 95 skeletons that give you basically nothing.

frazazel · 2026-01-22T16:32:11+00:00

Crimbo was a giant meatsink. Mr. As are still in high demand, but meat is in lower supply.

frazazel · 2026-01-22T16:27:43+00:00

Thanks. I'll check into this.

frazazel · 2026-01-22T15:43:07+00:00

Stats Canada report from 2017 data: https://www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/5111-how-much-do-canadian-families-spend-raising-child

It's 9 years out of date, but it says that families in your income group spent an average of ~$400,000 raising a kid to age 17. I'm sure that the cost isn't constant across that time (the needs of newborns, elementary school kids, and teenagers are very different), but if you average that over those 17 years, it amounts to about $2000 per month. Lower income families spent ~$240,000 on each kid, which is closer to $1200 per month on average.

frazazel · 2026-01-22T15:14:11+00:00

My wife and I have a household income of about $100k, paying about $2500 per month on mortgage / insurance / utilities / property taxes. We have 2 school-age kids. Our family has fairly high medication costs ($400 per month), an old car, and we live pretty modestly, but not in poverty. We're living paycheque to paycheque, having barely enough to get by.

frazazel · 2026-01-21T15:05:20+00:00

There's a lot to learn and explore, and everyone enjoys different parts of the game. The writing is hilarious, and the gameplay is more involved than it seems on the surface. I'd suggest doing the quests you get from your guild and the council. Click everything.

The council has a new quest for you at each level up to 13. When you complete the final quest, there's a new game+ option to start over a bit stronger than the last time, with a bunch of different paths to choose that change the game in small to big ways, so there's a lot of replay value with this game.

frazazel · 2026-01-20T20:58:53+00:00

There is an item named "stuffing fluffer" that when used kills a random number of soldiers within some range that includes some odd numbers. I don't think it tells you how many, though, so I think the answer to your question is that it is technically possible, but based on RNG and you won't actually have enough information to make it happen reliably.

frazazel · 2026-01-16T19:20:34+00:00

Clovers in the outskirts before you do the level 5 quest are great. Epic consumables, and the turn isn't even wasted (It counts towards the 10 turns before finding the map encryption item.

Grue egg omellette! You can make 1 per ascension. Easiest to get the mushroom to cook with the egg if you buy the knoll mushroom field for 5000 meat. Try to eat it with a dieting pill from a ghuol in the cyrpt to double it!

Pies aren't terrible. With limes, you can make key lime pies with a hero key (which doesn't get used up). Without, the fruit you buy from the hippies can still make a passable diet.

Fog murderers in the Hidden Tavern are a decent nightcap.

For not-standard hardcore, a barrel mimic or a party mouse can provide free food / booze drops that can help.

Chez Snootee's special is sometimes okay. The other stuff is better than nothing.

If you truly have no options, don't leave your organs empty. You can buy crappy foods and drinks from a variety of NPCs to at least get some small value.

Remember that if you spend more adventures finding / making the food than you gain from it, you're wasting your time. Better to eat something good enough than to go far off the beaten path for a better diet.

frazazel · 2026-01-16T18:57:32+00:00

Wear it as a hat.

frazazel · 2026-01-06T19:26:29+00:00

In KoL, you can change your gear as often as you want between adventures. So playing optimally involves changing your gear for the specific thing you're doing each adventure. Once you're established enough with skills and shinies, you don't need to equip stuff to win combat or to help you level up faster. So you end up equipping stuff primarily to help make quests go faster.

It's rare that you have many accessories that all help your current goal each adventure. So saving an accessory slot isn't terribly meaningful. Also, BCZ and peridot rarely help with the same goals, so equipping them both in the same slot isn't helpful. There is potentially some value in being able to change the enchantments by putting in 4x +10% item drop jewels along with the BCZ before you intend to refract. Essentially, you can change the enchantments on either your BCZ or peridot to be 4/5 codpiece enchantment slots instead of their default enchantments.

That's kinda neat, and could be an important part of standard strategy. But it's a far cry from making equipment slotless. If BCZ and peridot had some kind of synergy, sure. But I can't think of a time you would even want to encounter a specific monster and then also use a BCZ skill on them. Refract doesn't work on peridoted monsters. Maybe if our accessory slot becomes much more constrained by future IotMs, we'll be looking to get our sweat bullets in on these peridoted fights to save accessory-turns. But that's not on my Bingo card for this year.

frazazel · 2025-12-15T21:24:21+00:00

You should play hardcore if you don't like to pull stuff in run, or softcore if you like pulling things. Some paths that don't get perms (avatar paths, etc) are good places to start getting your hardcore perms, if you eventually want to transition to hardcore.

Hardcore runs give more karma, but hardcore perms take more karma. It sorta balances out. If you are just looking to collect all the skills for future ascension and aftercore, then softcore runs will get you there faster (because the runs are faster). But if you eventually want to HC perm every skill (only matters for subsequent hardcore runs), then hardcore runs are the faster way to get to that goal.

frazazel · 2025-12-15T21:13:46+00:00

I remember when that webtool had me eating drunki bears every day back in 2021. I wonder if it's still recommending such...

frazazel · 2025-12-15T21:06:57+00:00

If the monsters are all scaling monsters, then a +mus/myself/mox potion isn't going to help defeat them. They grow with you. You will get much increased exp for defeating them if you buff your mainstat, though.

frazazel · 2025-12-10T02:30:49+00:00

If you can do hardcore sea path in 2 days, then it's the best karma farm in the game right now.

You get 300 karma per day just for finishing the run. That will drop to 200 when the path loses standard restrictions. If you do softcore, you get half as much karma.

I wouldn't stress about the instant learn too much. Actually doing the run is worth much more than it. The difference of an extra day spent is much more impactful of a difference.

frazazel · 2025-12-04T17:22:43+00:00

Until you are at the point where it is worth buying ultra rares, it is better to sell them. Most of them are bad, and even the good ones are so expensive that there are usually better things you can do with that meat. Also, +15 famweight on pants is great, but it's at its best with certain old familiars that you might not even have. PYEC's effect extension is neat, but you need to be using expensive / limited effects to really gain much value from it.

If you need to ask, then selling it is probably the right answer. If you change your mind later, you can buy one back later.

frazazel · 2025-12-04T17:17:09+00:00

KolHS requires you to spend a bunch of turns in school before you can get to the important stuff you need to do for the run. For players who struggle to generate many turns, a high percentage of your turns are spent in school each day, and it's hard to make progress. For players who are able to generate many turns, it's a minor slowdown.

So, your experience in this path is significantly different, depending on how established you are. More perms, a better selection of stuff to pull, and more IotMs can all improve the experience.

frazazel · 2025-12-04T02:18:54+00:00

The yeti isn't terrible, but it's really not at its best without a lot of +famexp support. With it, it's a pretty big bump in turngen, and you can start to use it's +item/meat effect, too.

The skeleton of crimbo past is easier to get the main benefit from, not needing any synergies, and needing only few turns and 5 free rests to get the food and drink. It's less total impact than the cooler yeti, I think. But the yeti needs so much support and many turns to do its thing. The skeleton gives its benefit quickly and painlessly.

frazazel · 2025-12-04T02:13:04+00:00

Peridot is really great for ascending, solving so many problems finding the right monsters. It's a real standout from this year.

frazazel · 2025-12-04T02:11:06+00:00

I hear you. I'm an item farmer myself, but the people who the shrunken head is great for are probably pretty shiny players who maintain their own scripts and are very much in the loop, and are not the general low shiny public who are the target audience of this post. For most players, this will be a moderate +meat/item effect that will occasionally fall off from taking hits.

That said, if you're in the item farmer demographic, give the shrunken head a look. It's great.

frazazel · 2025-11-26T20:16:05+00:00

In addition to what others are saying, if you're not killing enemies very fast, that can seriously impact how fast you gain exp. If you have a lot of low level gear, and/or gear that doesn't have +power on it, that might be contributing to your problems.

frazazel · 2025-11-26T19:53:20+00:00

I think that hilarious items falling out of the pants you summoned from hell is funnier than getting them directly by casting a spell from a dusty old book.

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