User:Pewt/queststrategy
Each quest has a number of tricks and mechanics specific to it which are necessary to complete it in an effective fashion. This page should serve as a catalogue of effective ways to approach every quest. Each quest mini-walkthrough will assume you have a basic understanding of the goals and adventures in each quest, so check that quest's wiki pages if you need basic information on how the quest works.
If you are interested in more detailed numbers for these quests, shummie is working on threads linked here, but you don't really need such detailed information to complete the quests unless you wish to come up with different approaches than the ones given below.
Level 2: Mosquito Larva and Temple Unlock
This is a fairly straightforward quest; boost your NC and wait until you get all four pieces. Note that Arboreal Respite has both delay and a ceiling, so you'll want to spend 5 turns before you start exhausting noncombat modifier resources. You can unlock the hidden temple before completing the mosquito quest, so if you want to use your first semirare adventure on Baa'baa'bu'ran you should be sure to do the temple unlock first.
Level 3: The Typical Tavern
The Typical Tavern is a non-adventure.php zone with a few concurrent ways to speed both it and other quests up. Your goal should always be to work left across the top and then down the left side until you find the faucet, and then stop as soon as you do.
Combat Modifiers
Running either combat or noncombat modifiers works here depending on the situation. The 4 crate noncombats can be skipped without spending an adventure by having +20 of the appropriate elemental damage (hot, cold, stench, or spooky), so if you can't meet that requirement then you're probably best off boosting combat, and otherwise boosting noncombat can save a turn or two.
Tangles of Rat Tails
Depending on the +ML you have, you can fight larger rats, notably the drunken rat king which drops tangles of rat tails to speed up the level 11 quest. They appear at a rate of +ML/300, so be sure to save this zone until you have a lot of +ML active and are high enough level for Ur-Kel's Aria of Annoyance to be powerful. Usually this quest is done at level 10 or 11 for this reason.
Level 4: The Bat Hole
The bat hole is a fairly simple quest with mostly irrelevant areas. You should bring a source of stench resistance (common sources are the harem veil, Loathing Legion pizza stone, Astral Shell buff, Elemental Saucesphere buff, or Diminished Gag Reflex passive skill), a clover, and preferably a yellow ray as well. Using at least one clover in the Guano Junction is probably the most effective use of a clover you have in an ascension and should always be done. After that, either yellow ray a beanbat for the last sonar and an enchanted bean, or else fight beanbats for an enchanted bean and then ratbats for the last sonar.
The boss bat's lair itself is relatively simple; the boss bat can't show up until turn 5, and the best course of action is generally to run a spleener here for extra meat and spleen drops, and possibly use one of your underground Friar plants here due to the lack of alternatives on day 1 (the cyrpt is the only other viable option). There's no reason not to do the bat cave as soon as possible, and you should be sure to use your yellow ray here the moment you hit level 4 to have the option to use a second yellow ray on session 1.
Level 5: Cobb's Knob
Cobb's Knob is a two-stage quest: burn 11 turns in the Outskirts to receive the encryption key, then acquire either the harem or guard outfit to fight the king. If you can spare your first semirare you may wish to go for a Knob Goblin Elite Guard Captain as the KGE route allows access to the Dispensary. Otherwise, the harem route, in combination with either trailing or a yellow ray, is the superior option. Other than needing the lab key to complete the Palindome quest, this quest has no real time constraints and should be saved for whenever you have runaways to spare.
Level 6: The Copse of the Deep Fat Friars
The Friars is a fairly simple quest: each zone has three noncombats which have to be encountered in the correct order, and which have 5, 10, and 15 turn ceilings respectively. Boost noncombat rate to 25%, click, and pray.
Hot Wings
If you're under the Degrassi Knoll moonsign, you'll need 3 hot wings for the pirate quest later. Be sure to run a fairy, especially in The Dark Heart of the Woods. You may wish to do the Dark Heart first due to its extra Hot Wing-dropping monster thus allowing you to determine earlier whether you'll need a fairy for the rest of the Copse or not. If you finish the quest without enough Hot Wings, you'll probably want to farm the remaining ones instead of pulling them. If you were extremely unlucky and did not get a single Hot Wing, pulling a mohawk wig will allow you to unlock Beer Pong when used with a briefcase easily found in the Hidden City.
Level 7: The Cyrpt
The cyrpt involves four different areas which all need their own special methods of optimization, and finally a boss fight with an annoying block ability which means you should be sure to remove all of your +ML to guarantee survival in the face of poor RNG.
Boost item drops and kill skeletons. This is a good place to use the friar's underground item drop plant on day 1, and benefits from as much as +400% item drop. In addition, if you have any wandering or copied fights to make use of, this is a good place to do so; Baa'baa'bu'ran is the most likely candidate.
Beat up Lihcs to complete this zone. The dirty old lihc completes the zone faster, and thus you should either trail it, banish the others, or some combination of the two. However, if you're a pastamancer, the other lihcs can drop shimmering tendrils which may save a pull.
Running noncombat to find Death Rattlin' and selecting "Open the Rattling One" yields swarms of ghuol whelps, a ML-scaled monster which gives beeps equal to SquareRoot(+ML), rounded randomly. Since normal ghuols only advance the zone's progress by 4% whereas a single swarm can advance it by over 50%, running high +ML and +noncombat% is essential to completing this zone quickly, and if you have extra day 1 putties this is a good place to use them.
Running +initiative% increases your odds to find modern zmobies, which each save 4 turns in completing this zone. In addition, since modern zmobies are superlikely, running +noncombat% (to receive skippable noncombats) slightly helps. An initiative familiar and a free fight familiar are both decent choices in this zone, and you may want to hunt down some obscure initiative buffs like Fast as Lightning in addition to the basic ones.
Level 8: Mt. McLargeHuge
A very straightforward zone: trail the dairy goat and/or banish other goats. Get at least 150% +food drops to guarantee a goat cheese on every adventure. The only other thing you may wish to pay attention to is farming glasses of goat milk for milk of magnesium.
The mine presents a number of solutions depending on your access to skills and pulls. If you do not have Unaccompanied Miner or have pulls to spare, you can either fax and putty a mountain man or simply pull ore to complete this part of the quest (people who need chrome ore can also pull and untinker a heavy metal thunderrr guitarrr). If you have unaccompanied miner, you may wish to farm the outfit by boosting +noncombat%, and then using the mine predictor to find the ore as quickly as possible (mine 5 spots on day 1, roll over, mine 5 more, and then accept any turn costs required to find the remaining ore). Note that as of the addition of the lodestone in the level 9 revamp the mining predictor is slightly inaccurate, since the lodestone can replace any type of ore and can even split a vein in two.
In softcore the ninja route is the clear option. If you have no access to copies, pulling the ninja rope, ninja crampons, and ninja carabiner is by far the best option. If you do, either fax and copy a ninja snowman assassin or find one and then copy it twice. Note that you must be running +combat% to encounter any assassins, but whether more than +1% combat matters is unspaded.
Kill 3 yetis and then Groar. Other than potentially boosting item drops to +234% if you want hippo skin for a hippo whip, there is no special approach to this section of the quest. You'll need +5 cold resistance, which should be easy to acquire from skills, Greatest American Pants, or clever use of other available buffs or in-run items (such as can of black paint).
Level 9: The Three Peaks
Fighting in the valley should be avoided barring any possible alternative; either pull smut orc keepsake boxes or fax and copy a smut orc pervert three times (Obtuse Angel's badly romantic arrow with a quake of arrows works well here). The dictionary from the pirates will provide between 12 and 15 of each piece, so you'll need either a degrassi knoll moonsign or some other source of untinkering (preferably a Loathing Legion knife, due to the turn cost of finding the screwdriver the normal way) to complete this quest in an efficient manner.
You'll want to farm 3 A-Boo clues, each of which has a base 15% drop rate, fully solve those clues, and kill 4 ghosts to complete this zone. As a general rule, killing the 4 ghosts, clovering for clues if you didn't get at least two (or fighting more ghosts for a third if you got exactly two), and then solving the clues is the fastest way to solve this quest, and one of the best uses of clovers in a run. Due to the high HP and elemental resistances required to finish this quest, you may wish to put it off until level 12. You'll need to survive 936 damage split evenly between Cold and Spooky to complete this quest.
Easily available sources of relevant resistance or large HP:
- Crown of Thrones with a Pet Rock
- Exotic Parrot
- Greatest American Pants
- Astral Shell, Elemental Saucesphere, Cold-Blooded Fearlessness, and Northern Exposure.
- Oil of Parrrlay
- Titanium assault umbrella
- Glowing red eye
- Reinforced beaded headband
- Bejeweled pledge pin
- Scroll of Protection from Bad Stuff
- Green Giant
- Can of black paint
- Thick-Skinned
- Loathing Legion pizza stone
- Operation Patriot Shield
Boosting +ML can increase the type of monster you encounter here, and thus reduce the time this quest takes to complete. You'll want at least +50 ML for oil barons, and preferably +100 for oil cartels. In addition, you'll need enough +item% to get 12 bubblin' crude for a jar of oil, preferably without investing any extra turns into this zone.
A duskwalker syringe can help speed up acquisition of bubblin' crude, but you're unlikely to find one on A-boo Peak. However, if you're feeling lucky you may want to do this zone after A-boo peak just in case.
Due to the need for the jar of oil, this peak should be done last. You'll want to boost noncombats, run a fairy, and trail any hedge monster for a source of rusty hedge trimmers. However, since noncombats are a much better solution than hedge trimmers, they should be your priority.
All four tests should be trivial for any prepared speedster, but if you're particularly low on skills and resources you may want to be sure to do the stench resistance test immediately after A-boo peak.
Level 10: Above the Beanstalk
The Penultimate Fantasy Airship
The airship itself is quite simple; there are 5 noncombats you need to get in order, which have 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 turns of delay respectively. Boost your noncombat rate to 25% and pray. Other than running hipster fights, there isn't much else you can do.
However, there is a fair amount of setup in the fantasy airship which will help you speed up the Castle in the Clouds in the Sky later. You'll want to pick up a model airship for the Top Floor, and farming any of mohawk wig, titanium assault umbrella, and amulet of extreme plot significance will give you more options to complete the top and bottom floors of the castle, so you'll probably want to trail the Burly Sidekick and/or Quiet Healer or perhaps make use of a Yellow Ray.
Bottom Floor
There's relatively little to this floor other than boosting noncombats. If you don't have the amulet of extreme plot significance, there's a bit of luck involved in terms of what noncombats you get, but otherwise it's quite straightforward.
Ground Floor
There is no known way to speed this floor up nor anything useful you can do (unless you are unable to towerkill), so burn hipster fights here and get through it as fast as possible. You'll probably want to do the Bottom Floor and Top Floor at very different times due to this floor being in between them and potentially wasting your invisibility potion duration if you are using an NPZR chemistry set.
Top Floor
Due to the new Hole in the Sky unlock being significantly quicker than before, there's little reason not to open the Hole in the Sky here, meaning you have two goals: complete the quest, and unlock the Hole in the Sky. Unlike the Bottom Floor you won't have an option to skip and return to the noncombats, so you'll need to wear your mohawk wig until the quest is complete. Since the punk rock noncombat gives an option to go to the Steampunk noncombat after the quest is complete, you'll want to complete the quest first even if you get the steampunk choice.
Hole in the Sky
Depending on how much +item you have access to and what your average pull value is, you may want to farm both star hat and star staff, and in any case you'll want Richard's star key from here. If you can get to level 12 without it, this is an excellent area for flyering later, but it makes a good area for stats as well.
Level 11: The Quest for the Holy MacGuffin
After your first ascension in any path which allows access to familiars, all you'll need to do here is boost noncombat rate and find A Man in Black, and hopefully An Olith, Mon if you need a drum for the Naughty Sorceress. In challenge paths without familiars, you'll want to bring at least +100% item drops to guarantee broken wings and sunken eyes on your first try.
Unlocking the cellar is quite straightforward; adventure in the Haunted Ballroom until you find We'll All Be Flat, possibly turning off the ballroom song along the way. Other than free fights, you'll want to boost your noncombat rate to reduce useless adventures on turns where We'll All Be Flat doesn't show up; simply skip any curtains unless you're a Moxie class who needs the stats.
The wines themselves are a fairly straightforward case of fairying and hoping you get your drops in a timely fashion. If you use a copy on a monster here they'll be able to drop all 6 wines, so if you have access to extremely high levels of item drop you may wish to consider doing so.
This is one of the most hated quests in the game due to having relatively little means to influence it and being very prone to RNG swing. Other than possibly getting a drum machine from a blur while looking for the stone rose, you have relatively little chance to influence your turncount in this zone outside of using free fights. You may wish to use runaways in this zone to save turns on Ultrahydrated and thus reduce turns spent hydrating.
The clover adventure, Some Things Never Change, is generally not worth it if you have access to large numbers of runaways, but if you do not then it saves 3 turns and is thus one of the better clover adventures available.
The Hidden City is a superficially very straightforward zone, and is also the source of several tower items, gate items, and the briefcase, all of which you may need in some situations. However, there are a number of non-intuitive ways to speed it up.
- Free fights will reveal squares but will not trigger on special squares, thus saving 1 turn each.
- Welcome Back! and The Littlest Identity Crisis will reveal the square in which the adventure occurs and will not trigger on special squares, thus saving 1 turn each.
Unlocking the Hidden City is almost always done via fighting Baa'baa'bu'ran either through a semirare or a fax, as it is easy to guarantee at least two wools and stone wools have several useful secondary functions.
Finishing the Pirates' Cove
The first part of the Palindome quest, which involves finishing the remaining two areas in the Pirates' Cove, is quite straightforward. First off, run noncombat modifiers to look for It's Always Swordfish while hoping to encounter O Cap'm, My Cap'm for a big stat boost along the way. Second off, look Belowdecks for a gaudy pirate to trail or copy to complete the quest, while fairying in the hopes of finding a grungy pirate for an acoustic guitarrr.
The Palindome
The Palindome itself consists of two stages. First off, hope for the superlikelies which grant hard-boiled ostrich egg, photograph of god, and hard rock candy while simultaneously fairying while looking for Bob Racecar or Racecar Bob for stunt nuts and a ketchup hound. If you can't sustain 234% or more item drop bonus, you should be ready to sniff either bob when they show up.
Once you have all of the items listed above, attain a wet stew (which should be pulled in almost any situation) and cook wet stunt nut stew. Run noncombats for Drawn Onward, then run noncombats and run away in the Laboratory until you find Mr. Alarm, I Presarm. Finally, return to the Palindome to kill the doc.
In the Ancient Buried Pyramid, you're presented with two main ways to proceed to Ed: farm tomb rats for tomb ratchets in The Upper Chamber or look for Wheel in the Pyramid, Keep on Turning in The Middle Chamber. As a general rule, if you have any reasonable access to banishing or trailing then the Upper Chamber should be preferable, since while it takes one extra ratchet it grants combat stats and, especially with the help of tangles of rat tails, has the potential to be much faster than the Middle Chamber.
In some situations, such as in Avatar of Jarlsberg, it may be preferable to farm 9 tomb ratchets and then take advantage of the fact that the first instance of the wheel in the middle chamber is worth 2 ratchets since it both places and turns the wheel in one turn. However, most of the time you'll either want to go for 11 ratchets or 10 noncombats.
