Drinking Strategies

The Hermit humbly requests that this page be rewritten or expanded. Needs more information on Hardcore

A drinking strategy is how to ensure that you will have booze available to as you adventure, and maximizing your adventures accordingly. Best Booze has a list of all available booze in the game, and should be used to determine the best drink you can consume at a particular level.

Stats versus Adventures

Adventures are better than stats in almost all cases.

Unrestricted

If you unrestricted - that is, if you have broken the Prism, or are in Casual, or are in Normal after the end of Ronin - then the world is your oyster. You can purchase drinks in the mall, drink at the Food Court in Hobopolis, use BGE shotglasses, etc. As drinking is constantly changing, this guide does not attempt to replicate the Best Booze page, but one way to generate a huge number of adventures, is to consume spleen items, then drink three jars of fermented pickle juice, use a synthetic dog hair pill, and drink a fourth jar of fermented pickle juice. Not only will you get 126 adventures on average from this, you'll be able to reuse a whopping 20 spleen. That enables anywhere from 20 more adventures if you're consuming twinkly wads, to around 40 fromnot-a-pipes or glimmering roc feathers, to... some huge number... from epic wads or epic clusters.

In Ronin

Your strategy is to ensure you have a wide variety of cocktails in Hagnk's and available for pull. Occasionally, new cocktails can create better pull options, but typically, stock up corpse drinks and supercocks. The emphasis will be on stocking high-drunkenness items (corpse drinks have a drunkenness of 6) to reduce the number of pulls you need. As an example, over the course of a low-stress 4-day softcore run:

• Day 1: 1 corpse + 2 SHC during run, 1 corpse as nightcap
• Day 2: 3 SHC, 1 corpse during run, 1 corpse as nightcap
• Day 3: 3 SHC, 1 corpse during run, 1 corpse as nightcap
• Day 4: 4 SHC, no nightcap needed

On Day 1, wait as long as you can before drinking. (Ideally, you'll get Liver of Steel on day 1.) You can drink corpse drinks at level 5, and SHC drinks at level 6. Once that threshhold has passed, you'll no longer need to worry about level.

Having a pumpkin patch allows you to make pumpkin beer cheaply, which gives you a great way to fill up 3 drunkenness without a pull.

Hardcore

As you'll have no pulls to work with, Hardcore booze is all about what skills you have available and what you can find with minimal effort. Some places you'll want to get booze:

• Certain Items of the Month allow access to epic quality booze, such as the Source Terminal's for hacked gibsons, or the 2017 familiar of the year's Wax booze. The Sacramento wine from Witchess Set is also a potent option.
• Typical Tavern swill. You'll get these for free once you complete the level 3 quest, and these can be improved if you know Advanced Cocktailcrafting.
• Many mid range monsters drop basic booze that can be improved with Advanced Cocktailcrafting.
  • As a Moxie class with Superhuman Cocktailcrafting permed, even better options will become available.
• The top row of the Barrel Full of Barrels provides drinks that can be improved with Advanced or Superhuman Cocktailcrafting as well, but will be a waste of precious adventures most of the time. With the trivial update to allow you to smash more than one barrel per adventure, this is particularly viable in Bad Moon runs.
• For a nightcap (see below) you can either use Fog Murderers, once you have unlocked the Hidden Tavern, or if you've got the Summon Clip Art skill you can summon a whole bucket of wine, which is the best nightcap available in Hardcore.

If you do have to farm for booze ingredients, remember to balance out how long you think you'll need with adventures you'll get from the booze – suddenly, that terrible Mad Train wine might not look so bad anymore.

Nightcap (Overdrink before Rollover)

No matter whether you overdrink by 1 or by 10, your drunkness will reset to zero at rollover. A "nightcap" is a last drink of the day which makes you overdrunk (usually very overdrunk) and which gives you lots of adventures and/or stats, with the anticipation of playing those adventures after the next rollover. With nightcaps, the total is what matters - not the ratio of adventures/stats per drunkness.

For example, let's say you fill your stomach and your spleen, and you drink to 14 drunkness, which might yield, say, around 200 adventures. You then play all 200 adventures, and your hourglass reaches zero. Someone casts Ode to Booze on you. You drink a bucket of wine as your nightcap. Your drunkness jumps from 14 to 24, and you gain 16-19 Adventures, plus another 10 from Ode to Booze. Thus, you go into rollover with around 28 adventures on your hourglass, and emerge from rollover with around 68, plus any bonus from equipped items, clan furnishings, etc. (If you have Liver of Steel, and/or are on an Avatar-type challenge path, then the highest Drunkness before overdrinking may be different than 14; for example, if you are Avatar of Boris then it's 4, and if you are Avatar of Sneaky Pete with Liver of Steel and Hard Drinker then it's 34.)

Some other nightcaps: Ye Olde Meade gives 14-16 Adventures, plus five from Ode to Booze, for a total of around 20. Fog Murderer has the same range, but one more potency, so it gains one more from Ode; it also gives more Strongness. Psychotic Train wine gives 19-20 adventures, plus 6 from Ode, but has a minimum level of 11. Wrecked Generator gives 28-32, plus 5 from Ode, for 33-37. At the low end, ice-cold Willer (or plain old beer, etc.), gives you one adventure, plus another adventure from Ode, for a total of 2. It could be worse - you could become overdrunk from a Yummy Tummy bean or Yellow drunki-bear, and enter rollover with a flat zero on your hourglass.

If you have a useful way to spend Adventures while overdrunk (such as copied monsters), or if you're going to reach the rollover cap of 200 adventures, then adjust accordingly!