Way of the Surprising Fist
From A KoL Wiki
Way of the Surprising Fist is the Fall 2011 special challenge path, introduced on August 15, 2011. This path adds variant rules and restrictions to an ascension run. Its description in The Bureau of Reincarnation reads "You follow the teachings of the Ancient Masters of the Surprising Fist. You'll have to register your hands as deadly weapons, but it might be tricky to pay the registration fee on account of your vow of poverty."
While in a Way of the Surprising Fist run, players may not equip any weapons or off-hand items. Meat gains are significantly reduced in many areas of the game, and certain special combat skills can be unlocked.
Restrictions
- Equipment:
- You cannot equip any weapon or off-hand item. Attempting to do so yields the following message:
- Have you forgotten your training? Only an empty hand can make a fist, Grasshopper.
- You will not be able to equip the Mining Gear, Frat Boy Ensemble, Knob Goblin Elite Guard Uniform or any other outfit that includes a weapon.
- You will not be able to equip the hilarious comedy prop or Victor, the Insult Comic Hellhound Puppet, but neither of these are required to finish Azazel's quest.
- You will not be able to equip your legendary epic weapon to finish the Dark and Dank and Sinister Cave, which means you cannot finish the Me and My Nemesis quest.
- As a Seal Clubber, you won't be able to fight infernal seals, with the exception of the Spawn of Wally which can be killed with Prismatic Damage due to its low HP.
- A Disembodied Hand can partially work around some of these restrictions:
- It can equip the hilarious comedy prop for stats from Mourn, and for MP regeneration when no other familiar is required (e.g. Shore trips).
- It can equip one-handed legendary epic weapons, meaning the non-moxie classes can get their epic hat and pants. However, it cannot help with the final battle, or with moxie classes.
- You will not be able to equip unstable fulminate to make it into a wine bomb; to reach The Summoning Chamber during the level 11 quest, you must make the actual mortar-dissolving solution.
- A Left-Hand Man can solve this issue for you, however
- Skills that use weapons from your inventory, such as Disco Shank, will still work.
- Meat:
- Attempting to autosell an item will instead cause you to donate it to charity, yielding no Meat, with the following message:
- You don't want to break your vow of poverty, so you donate your <item> to charity.
- Meat drops from monsters are reduced. No monster has a base Meat drop above 12, though this is affected as normal by bonus Meat from Monsters modifiers.
- You cannot pull Meat from Hagnk's Ancestral Mini-Storage. Doing so results in this message:
- Your vow of poverty prevents you from thinking about the <amount of Meat in storage> you currently have stored in Hagnk's.
- You can, however, buy raffle tickets with Meat from Hagnk's.
- Your vow of poverty prevents you from thinking about the <amount of Meat in storage> you currently have stored in Hagnk's.
- According to Gemelli, familiars are not supposed to still randomly drop Meat. He did not say anything one way or the other about enthroned familiars. (Enthroned 5-15 Meat drops still occur.)
- Tickle-Me Emilio will still drop 60 Meat. A bug has his message read 'You point your at him' when you are unarmed.
- Fist Turkey also still drops Meat.
- Meat normally received from some quests, non-combat adventures, and using certain items is instead donated to charity:
- Items:
- 668 scroll – Always gives the "Poverty" result, losing an average of (5 * main stat) Meat
- ancient vinyl coin purse
- black pension check
- briefcase (cannot be opened at all -- you simply lose the item; no chance of fat stacks)
- chest of the Bonerdagon
- CSA discount card
- cursed piece of thirteen
- duct tape wallet
- flytrap pellet – You can get items but not the Meat.
- Handful of tips
- old coin purse and old leather wallet
- orcish meat locker
- Penultimate Fantasy chest – You get the items but not the Meat.
- shiny stones
- Warm Subject gift certificate
- Non-combat adventures:
- Knob-Goblin Treasury noncombats no longer appear, other than Finally, the Payoff.
- The Haunted Bedroom, the top drawer choice of One Nightstand (Ornate)
- Quests:
- Dolphin King's Map Quest will not reward its 150 Meat
- Spooky Forest Quest will not reward its 500 Meat
- The Wizard of Ego will not reward its 500 Meat
- A Fledgling Pirate Is You! will not reward its 3000 Meat
- The Organic Produce Stand will not reward any Meat.
- You can't complete the Me and My Nemesis
- You can't complete the Dwarven Factory Quest
- You can't complete the Repair the Elves' Shield Generator
- You can't plant saplings for Arrrbor Day
- You can't hack through the lianas in The Hidden City, having to fight them instead.
- You can't equip the UV-resistant compass to speed up The Arid, Extra-Dry Desert.
- The dirty thieving brigands from The Themthar Hills ARE affected by the Meat reductions, making it prohibitively awkward to Recover the Sisters' Meat as part of the Mysterious Island Quest. It's still possible, but remember that the goal is to collect 100,000 Meat from them, which at 12 Meat per turn is ~8,000 turns.
- Other:
- You do not receive anything from the meat sluice from the Model Train Set.
- Items:
- Attempting to autosell an item will instead cause you to donate it to charity, yielding no Meat, with the following message:
- Holidays:
- There is no bonus 15 fullness from Feast of Boris, although the FoB Special Monsters will appear. When this was the current challenge path, however, FoB allowed 15 extra fullness. It is not known when the devs changed this. The message that shows is "Today is the Feast of Boris. The Surprising Fist craves not these things.".
Divergences
- The Shore, Inc. offers 'bargain' vacations for 5 meat and 5 adventures (instead of 500 meat and 3 adventures).
- With Worldpunch active, you do not need any of the mining gear to mine in Itznotyerzitz Mine. Players who have gone in with both the mining hat/pants on and Worldpunch active have reported getting regular adventures instead of mining. (bug?)
- Instead of buying items from the The Black Market, you can opt to fight Wu Tang the Betrayer, who drops the forged identification documents and can of black paint.
- Note that you cannot shop in the black market afterwards; instead you get a message:
- It was briefly possible to accidentally autosell your paint to charity: that has been fixed. If you try to use the black paint as a potion, you'll get the following message:
- You cannot obtain a Red Zeppelin ticket, so be prepared to get thrown off The Red Zeppelin repeatedly.
- The O.A.F. will not autosell items at the end of combat.
- The Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot will not produce Meat.
- Frank will assist in dismantling the Wall of meat within the Naughty Sorceress' Tower, ensuring that it can be overcome despite the meat drop reduction.
Teachings of the Fist
- This path offers the opportunity to learn path specific skills by acquiring and using Teachings of the Fist scrolls. You receive a scroll on your 12th turn in each of these zones:
- Free runaways can be used to reduce the number of turns spent acquiring scrolls.
- You will need to use at least 5 of these scrolls to mine (if you are in Hardcore)
- You may acquire the scrolls in any 5 zones of your choice. They will always yield the skills in the order shown in the table below, regardless of the location where you acquired them.
- Once the prism is broken, scrolls will no longer drop from these zones. You may still use any acquired skills, but you must be unarmed to use any acquired combat skills.
- Skills learned from the Teachings of the Fist scrolls are learned in a specific order:
| Surprising Fist Techniques | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| # | Skill | Type | MP Cost | Effect |
| 1 | Flying Fire Fist | Combat | 0 | Deals Hot Damage. Can be boosted by turns of Salamanderenity |
| 2 | Salamander Kata | Noncombat | 5 | (3X) turns of Salamanderenity regenerate 3-4 MP per turn |
| 3 | Drunken Baby Style | Combat | 0 | Deals damage based on inebriety level. |
| 4 | Stinkpalm | Combat | 0 | Deals Stench Damage. |
| 5 | Worldpunch | Noncombat | 11 | (X) turns of Earthen Fist +10 damage to Fist techniques. Allows you to mine. |
| 6 | Knuckle Sandwich | Combat | 0 | Deals damage and reduces monster attack by 3X. |
| 7 | Seven-Finger Strike | Combat | 0 | Deals X damage and hits 7 times in a round. |
| 8 | Miyagi Massage | Noncombat | 5 | (3X) turns of Retrograde Relaxation regenerate 8-10 HP per turn |
| 9 | Chilled Monkey Brain Technique | Combat | 0 | Deals Cold Damage and stuns your opponent. |
| 10 | Zendo Kobushi Kancho | Combat | 0 | Deals Sleaze Damage and reduces monster defense by 3X. |
| 11 | Master of the Surprising Fist | Passive | 0 | Allows you to attack with your Surprising Fist |
| X is # of Teachings of the Fist used. | ||||
- Only Master of the Surprising Fist is able to be permed. Even if Master of the Surprising Fist is permed, you "learn" it again from the eleventh scroll. Permed Master of the Surprising Fist does not add to the base effect of other techniques (The "X" in the above chart) until it is relearned in the current ascension.
- If you drop your path and revert to an ordinary Normal/Hardcore run, all of the above skills will be forgotten.
Strategy
- Take advantage of powerful Teachings of the Fist skills in combat. Getting the first 3 early on can help you gain MP and survive combat easily. The stun effect of Chilled Monkey Brain Technique is very useful for tougher monsters if you don't already have a similar skill (like Entangling Noodles) permed.
- However, you will need to survive long enough to get the first 3 skills. Combat skills and familiars (even the plain star starfish) are helpful.
- Choose the locations where you acquire skill scrolls carefully. Some are more helpful than others, and unless you are going to perm Master of the Surprising Fist on your current run, you do not need to visit them all.
- Note that getting alternate desert access with a pumpkin carriage or by other means will not complete the guild quest, so you will not be able to unlock The Road to the White Citadel and get the Teachings of the Fist there without first building an actual bitchin' meatcar.
- Meat Management is the name of the game. You will get very little from combats (but it adds up over time).
- Useful sources of game Meat can come from:
- Selling rat whiskers to The Pretentious Artist
- Selling bar skins to the hunter in Tree's Last Stand
- 300 Meat with the tree-holed coin (one-time bonus)
- 500 Meat, once per day, from Finally, the Payoff in the Treasury while wearing the Knob Goblin Harem Girl Disguise outfit.
- 250 and 350 Meat (one time each) from the Friars' Quest zones.
- 200-300 Meat from noncombat choice adventures in The Cyrpt.
- 100 Meat from noncombat choice adventures in The Obligatory Pirate's Cove.
- Meat vortices do drop Meat based on what you would normally get.
- 50-60 Meat (sometimes) from resting in your campsite with loose teeth.
- 470+ Meat from two Leprechaun (lower-case L) noncombats in the Enormous Greater-Than Sign.
- 400-500 Meat from Tonic djinn, dropped by a tonic water elemental in the The Daily Dungeon.
- 400-22000 Meat from the chest game near the end of the White Citadel Quest.
- Up to 3000 Meat per day if your clan has An Exotic Hanging Meat Orchid, A Potted Meat Bush and/or A Potted Meat Tree in the Clan Rumpus Room, if you are in post-Ronin softcore.
- The BittyCar MeatCar and festive warbear bank work as normal.
- The Mr. Store item Chateau Mantegna's Swiss piggy bank will continue to give 1000 meat per day.
- Approximately 200 meat per 2 adventures at Lyle's monorail
- 100 meat per day from Government per-diem if you own Oliver's Place. Another 50ish from Pool.
- One cast of Meatify Matter from a Grey Goose can provide enough meat for the entire run.
- Your Meat expenses will include:
- 300 Meat for sweet rims, to access Desert Beach (unless pulled in softcore).
- 1000 Meat for the photograph of a red nugget and photograph of God in The Palindome.
- Your Meat expenses may include:
- 100 Meat for a spooky sapling if "Dakota" Fanning isn't aided.
- 100 Meat to buy a casino pass.
- Approximately 360 Meat to play poker 12 times for a Teaching (on average you get 25 Meat back from the four regular adventures here. Hipster fights here still consume 30 Meat).
- 400 Meat for dingy planks, to make the dingy dinghy (unless pulled in softcore; in hardcore, if you have A Bone Garden, the skeletal skiff is an alternative, along with the Hippy Boatman Quest).
- Any Guild skills you need to buy.
- Arena training for familiar equipment.
- 1000 Meat apiece for Dramatic™ range, Queue Du Coq cocktailcrafting kit and tenderizing hammer (unless pulled in softcore).
- A variable number of chewing gum on a strings at 50 Meat apiece, and 100 Meat for a hermit permit. These will consume a great deal of your early-game Meat in hardcore.
- Fruits, fermenting powder, and/or soda water for cocktails.
- Cooking ingredients (pie tins, dough) for certain diets.
- Fortune cookies.
- Meat paste (minus any that drops in the Pantry), bitchin' meatcar parts, and/or detuned radio (depending on sign).
- HP/MP restorers
- The Astral item you select from Pet Heaven upon ascending into this path should be chosen with care; the weapons are obviously useless, as are the off-hand items. If they're unlocked, the bonus damage from the astral shirt and the muscle boost from the astral trousers will help your punching power considerably in the early levels (but the bonus weapon damage from the trousers will not - apparently fists don't count). The astral bracer's MP cost reduction is less important, as all the combat skills are already 0 MP, and using Salamander Kata will help with MP.
- Choosing a Moon sign: The Vole is a solid choice for any class, since initiative and max mana are important limiting factors in this run. The Mongoose gives muscle stats and bonus damage and would seem the obvious Muscle class choice. The Platypus might be a decent choice for Turtle Tamers; it is not known whether the extra Meat drop from The Wombat works, so that's probably best avoided unless you're spading it. Any of the three Moxie signs (The Vole, The Marmot, The Packrat) could be useful but the clovers from The Marmot might save you some Meat. The Mysticality signs are probably about even for bonuses.
In choosing among the friendly Degrassi Knoll, Little Canadia and The Gnomish Gnomads' Camp:- The Knoll will save you 1000 Meat on a hammer thanks to the services of Innabox. This was more relevant back when you had to smith your Epic weapon, which is required to open The "Fun" House in order to get the skill it contained within. Skipping the hammer means no Pulverize. You will also not have to buy meat paste, as you have The Plunger. However, this will be offset by needing to buy parts for your bitchin' meatcar, unless you have A Pumpkin Patch and can use one of your pumpkins to make a pumpkin carriage. You'll also need to spend Meat on a Detuned radio if you want access to an MCD.
- You cannot equip the Frat Boy Ensemble, so finishing Barrrney's Barrr will require either a frilly skirt and hot wings, or mullet wig and briefcase. The former is a cheap purchase in Knoll signs, but the latter may be available while unlocking the Path to the White Citadel (if you are going for a full set of Fist skills).
- The Gnomads and Little Canadia sell items that will let you use the Pork-elf goodies you can't autosell (Gnomochloric acid and Jewelrymaking gear), but they're pricey. However, you don't have to pay to use the MCDs there.
- For the truly desperate for Meat, a Discount Telescope Warehouse gift certificate with fully upgraded Telescope will give you 100,000 Meat, if you are not in Hardcore or Ronin.
- Skills:
- Kung Fu Hustler is very, very useful on this run. Even if you don't need the damage boost, the extra initiative and item drop will help.
- A spell or two will help in the early game, especially for moxie classes.
- Entangling Noodles will help throughout the run; remember that you have no shield to reduce damage.
- Skills that provide initiative boosts such as Overdeveloped Sense of Self Preservation, Slimy Shoulders, and Springy Fusilli are useful for the same reason.
- Since this challenge path came into existence, the Accordion Thief skill Five Finger Discount was implemented. Having items from NPC stores cost 5% less Meat will undoubtedly make quite a difference in meat management for those on the Way of the Surprising Fist.
- Passive Meat drop increasing skills such as Expert Panhandling help mitigate the Meat shortage -- the increase is small, but will add up to a few hundred extra Meat over a run.
- However, Polka of Plenty and Meat drop familiars are not recommended given the extremely low returns for the costs, opportunity or otherwise, and there still being decent ways to farm Meat from noncombats.
- Not everyone agrees with this point.
- Despite being a Mr. Store skill, Summon Clip Art can be a great tome to have because of the unarmed-only equipment.
References
- The name of this path references the oft-parodied fact that the martial arts disciplines often have silly names when translated directly to English.
History
- Prior to August 17 (2011), you used to be able to break the cage and obtain the tablet of sinister strumming without any Fist skills. After this, 5 were needed. "CDM has said that he'll wipe the leaderboard if needed." (It wasn't needed.)
- Before the Tower revamp, A Perplexing Door only required a Star hat, a Star Starfish, and Earthen Fist. You did not need a weapon.
- Before the Tower revamp, you did not need to equip the huge mirror shard to get past the Electrical Attack.
- All of the above are, of course, now obsolete since the major revamp to the Naughty Sorceress's Tower, but this did not take place while the path was the current path.
- When this path was first introduced, Hagnk's would give you all of your stored Meat once you finished Ronin in a Normal Run. Now, you can only take your stored items -- your Meat stays in storage until you break the prism.
- Prior to August 17 (2011), the guild's nemesis quest giver used to give you 1000 Meat. Now you get nothing.
Rewards
- Finishing a Way of the Surprising Fist run that began while it was still the current special challenge path -- that is, between August 15th, 2011, and November 14th, 2011 -- gave players 100 (in Hardcore) or 50 (in Normal) extra karma points the next time they visit Valhalla.
- Players will receive a Thwaitgold grasshopper statuette upon defeating the Naughty Sorceress.
- The Master of the Surprising Fist skill can be marked Permanent or Hardcore Permanent.
- The Mixed Martial Arts, Hadouken!, and Good Will Punching trophies may become available.
