KOLHS/Strategy

From A KoL Wiki

General Information

See KOLHS for basic information about the path.

The faction you choose does not have to match your class. Choose based on what quest items you want to make.

Use your weakest class combat skills (or combat items for moxie/greaser) to get your faction intrinsic as soon as possible. You'll want this before lunch, so you get the stats for sitting with your faction.

As usual with scaling monsters, boost your mainstat to increase your stat gains.

Once the bell rings, you'll have to choose an extracurricular activity (unless you counted turns and left just before the bell). If you choose a quest item crafting class, this will count as one of your three daily activities, regardless of how many things you make. So you might want to check your inventory (/count works even when you're stuck in the choice adventure) before selecting a crafting class.

You can return for your other two extracurricular activities at any time later in the day (for example, you can hit the Choir Club when you need the +item or +meat boost). Don't forget to come back!

The out-of-school booze drops (the ones that occur randomly and cost 100 meat) are believed to work as follows:

  • They can appear as a result of any combat which does not take place in a school zone. This includes turn 1 faxing.
  • They cannot appear if you already received an out-of-school booze today and did not drink it.
  • They cannot appear if you are at 10 drunkenness or higher. (Needs confirmation.)
  • The type of booze you get is most likely based on your level (note the level requirements on some of the booze).

So, the booze plan (if you're skipping liver, which is recommended) is to grab two of the 3-liver booze from the Halls and hold on to them. Adventure normally after school, and each time you get a 2-liver booze, drink it immediately (or as soon as you can get Ode running), so that you can get another. Repeat until you hit 10 drunkenness; then drink the first of your 3-liver booze. Save the other for a nightcap.

Softcore Strategies

Hardcore Strategies

This path can be completed in 3 days with a focus on turn generation, or in 4 days with a focus on turn cutting.

4-day run

Consider banking turns and spending no Adventures (other than perhaps a faxed quantum mechanic or sleepy mariachi) on one of the days. This cuts the mandatory number of school turns from 160 to 120. Even without the scaling stat gains, this represents a large number of saved turns. Which day to skip is not clear:

  • Skipping day 1 means you have virtually no food, booze or spleen items to generate turns (but given that a 3-day run has succeeded, even the 40 rollover turns from doing nothing on day 1 may be sufficient).
  • Skipping day 3 means you lose the extra duration on your Choir Club buff on day 4 (it gets reset to 10 turns after a missed day).
  • Skipping day 2 lets you have 20 turns of the Choir buff on the final day, but only 2 days of mining, assuming you don't get the mining outfit on day 1. (2 days are usually, but not always, sufficient to get your ore without spending turns mining.)

If you're a moxie class, the choice between astral belt and astral mask is not easy. The moxie bonus of the mask will increase your stat gains during school (scaling monsters), and the item drop bonus is helpful, but the belt will give more stats throughout the whole run.

For non-moxie classes, the astral mask does not increase stat gains from scaling monsters, so the astral belt is probably the best speed choice. The astral shirt and astral mask are also good choices, particularly the mask for +item if you're having trouble with KOLHS crafting drops, or capping the standard 30% quest-completion drops.

The miniature suspension bridge is the single biggest turn saver among the after-school craftables. Plan on picking up two bridges and at least one universal key in Shop Class over the course of the run. If you want more keys, you may want to return to the Shop class again, but the first two are the most useful. (If you don't have an Angry Jung Man, then using a universal key in place of a digital key is a huge turn saver, strongly recommended. Even if you do have a Jung Man, it saves over eight turns. The star key saves fewer turns, since you still have to farm the star hat and a weapon.)

You also want quasireligious sculptures from Art Class, the first six of which save an average of six turns each. The sticky clay homunculus can save 3-4 turns at Sonofa Beach, but you'll generally just want the sculptures. Plan your run around Art Class and Shop Class accordingly.

Other after-school craftables may be useful replacements for skills or Mr. Store familiars that you happen to lack (yellow rays, etc.) and can serve a few other functions. Giant erasers are easily sniffed for and provide free runaways; deathchucks and dirty stinkbombs provide useful banishing; and the world's most dangerous birdhouse can kill Tower monsters.

3-day run

Here the focus is on generating enough turns to finish the run. There won't be any "skip days", and you have 1 less fax available.

Public log

Items of the Month

  • The over-the-shoulder Folder Holder is obviously a top pick for this path. Some folder choice considerations (remember, you can bring 3 folders with you through ascension):
    • Skull and crossbones (-combat): Good for both speedruns and relaxed runs. You always want more -combat in Hardcore.
    • Jackass Plumber (+25 ML): The best statgain folder (3.1 mainstat/combat), and thus ideal for speedruns.
    • Mainstat folder (smiley face, wizard, space skeleton) (+2 mainstat/fight): Good for both speedruns and relaxed runs. Make sure to pick the right one before ascending.
    • Tranquil landscape (DR, HP/MP regen): In Hardcore, if you're doing a speed run and you have a rich skill set, you want this. The MP regen and DR will allow you to run way more +ML than you've ever been able to afford before. May not be optimal in softcore, but amazing for quality of life. You will never lack for MP and will need to heal less often.
  • The above folders are great for your three ascension-proof slots. The next two slots need to be filled in-run. Good candidates include:
    • Red, blue, green (+20 to a stat): Great for turn 0 to tweak how the KOLHS monsters scale to you. Remember that +20 mainstat on a scaling monster is +2.5 mainstat per fight, until you hit the cap (200 in KOLHS, 10000 in video game dungeons, etc.). Outside of scaling zones, +20 moxie or muscle (depending on your class and playstyle) can be great for quality of life.
    • Sports car (+5 adv/day): For making daycount, or if you get multiples of another folder and can afford to shred this one after rollover.
    • Heavy metal (+5 fam weight): Another 15–20% item drop with a Scarecrow/Hatrack, or ~10% item drop otherwise.
    • Yedi (+50% spell damage): Not the best for speedruns, but excellent for enabling Kill Everything Mode otherwise.
    • KOLHS (+50% item in school zones): This probably isn't worth the SR, even with an optimal dog, but as of this writing we don't know the drop rates on most KOLHS items. Time will tell.
  • The Florist is extremely useful, and even more so if you are doing longer runs. All the school zones are indoors, so you'll need to decide where to plant the +25% item indoor flower each day. You'll typically be in 2 school zones per day (Halls + 1 classroom), so Muscle classes may use the +5 muscle per fight flower in whichever zone doesn't get the +item flower on day 1.
  • The Steam-Powered Cheerleader is immune to the "no pets in school" weight limit. She is also a 1.4x superfairy who loses effectiveness throughout the day, meaning she's at her peak while you're in school. She doesn't need a fax or yellow ray to become a superfairy like the Scarecrow and Hatrack do -- she simply starts out as one (albeit not as strong).
  • The Fancypants Scarecrow and Mad Hatrack need a fax + yellow ray to become 2x weight superfairies. When one of them becomes too heavy for school, you can use the other. The Cheerleader may be a better choice for 3-day, but the spanglyracks are a great choice for 4-day, with the extra fax available, especially if you happen to have both familiars.
  • Garden items:
  • Most of the standard no-path IotM choices work well in KOLHS. The obvious exceptions are anything that gives you booze (which you can't drink), and hats (which can't be worn during school turns). This is not to say that the Crown of Thrones, Boris's Helm and other IotM hats are useless in this path -- they're still useful for most of the non-school turns.

Faxes

Mostly, no-path fax strategies apply to KOLHS. In addition, the semi-rare teachers may be considered as targets, if you want additional crafting components for your faction's after-school class:

The teachers also give a very large number of stats.

Among no-path targets, the sleepy mariachi merits special mention here. With the base weight limit on familiars, having items for both the Mad Hatrack and the Fancypants Scarecrow extends your ability to use them during school turns. This is especially helpful if you happen to have both the Hatrack and the Scarecrow, but not a Steam-Powered Cheerleader.

After-school craftables

Several of the craftable quest items can speed up the game. Note, however, these are all quest items that will disappear upon breaking the prism. Do not make extras.

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
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