Adventure Queue

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The adventure queue is a feature in the game that makes high occurrences of the same adventure in a short period of time less likely. It works by keeping track of the last few adventures, and then sometimes rejecting an adventure if it's rolled again. For example, if you head to the goatlet for the first time and fight a dairy goat, dairy goats will be slightly less frequent for the next few adventures.

The queues are 5 encounters long. There are separate queues for combats in each zone, and for noncombats in each zone.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Specifically, the way an adventure is chosen is

• Check the conditions for each of the Superlikely adventures in the zone. If you meet the requirements for a superlikely, you receive that adventure. (If you qualify for more than one, you receive one of the possible ones at random, with equal probability.) If you do not meet the requirements for any of the superlikelies, then:
• Decide on either combat or non-combat.
  • Create a selection list to use for the encounters.

• (c) If combat: populate the selection list with the possible combat encounters from the zone like so:

• For each combat encounter in the zone, first do the following:

1. If the monster is olfacted, add 3 copies of that monster to the list (does not override the special rejection rate below). Note that since this occurs for each copy of a monster in the base list, in a zone that starts out with 2 copies of a monster, the olfaction processing would result in a total of 6 additional copies of the monster in the selection list, etc. (The same goes for Attunement, below.)
2. If you have attuned to the monster's essence with a Staff of the Cream of the Cream jiggle, add 2 copies of that monster to the list.
3. If the monster is banished, do not add it to the list.
4. Otherwise, add the monster to the list.

• If, at this point, the combat selection list is empty, ignore banishing and use the original list of combat encounters.

• For each monster in the list:

1. If the monster has a special rejection rate on it, remove it if a roll says that monster should be rejected (applies to all copies at once).
2. If there is a conditional, such as delay() on the monster, remove it unless the conditional has been met.

• (c select) Select an encounter from the selection list.
• If, at this point, the combat selection list is empty, fight a tumbleweed.
• If it's olfacted, that's the encounter.
• If it's not in the combat queue, that's the encounter.
• If it's in the combat queue,

• 25% of the time: accept the encounter.
• 75% of the time: go to (c select) and choose a new combat encounter, subjecting that choice to the combat queue as well.

• (nc) If non-combat: populate the selection list with the possible non-combat adventures from the zone like so:

1. If the adventure has a special rejection rate on it, do not add it if a roll says that it should be rejected.
2. If there is a conditional, such as delay() on the adventures, do not add it unless the conditional has been met.
3. Otherwise, add the adventure to the list.

• (nc select) Select an adventure from the selection list.
• If the non-combat selection list is empty, go to (c)
• If it's not in the non-combat queue, that's the adventure.
• If it is in the non-combat queue,

• 25% of the time: accept the adventure.
• 75% of the time: go to (nc select) and choose a new non-combat adventure, subjecting that choice to the non-combat queue as well.

Note that once you enter the queue-elimination process, you don't reroll for superlikely or the type of encounter: if a non-combat is first selected you only examine non-combats against the non-combat queue, and similarly for combats.

Equations for Encounter Frequency

For one type (combat or non-combat) of encounter, with

• e total encounters in a zone,
• j fractional chance of rejecting an adventure in the queue (assumed to be 3/4 or 75%), and
• u unique encounters from this zone in the adventure queue
• U giving the indexes for the u adventures from this zone in the queue
• R (elements r_i) giving the frequencies of encounters of our type in this zone
• r_inq giving the total base frequency of drawing any of the encounters from this zone that are present in the queue.

For all adventures equally likely, r_i=1/e and the chance of drawing an encounter that is present in the queue is (assuming j=3/4)

                    1
 inq(j;e,u)  = -----------
                4 e - 3 u

while the chance of drawing an encounter not present in the queue is

                    4 
 outq(j;e,u) = -----------
                4 e - 3 u

Note that these formulas only hold if the zone's encounters are equally likely.

If the adventures are not equally likely, the chance of drawing an encounter that is present in the queue is (again assuming j=3/4)

                           1 
 inq(j,R,U;i)  = ri ---------------
                     4 - 3 * rinq

The chance of drawing an encounter not present in the queue is

                           4 
 outq(j,R,U;i) = ri ---------------
                     4 - 3 * rinq

Table of Encounter Frequency

For j=75%, among e total encounters of that flavor in the zone (all equally likely), and u unique encounters from the zone already in the queue:

Percent chance to draw each encounter that is in the queue

u \ e	3 enc. in zone	4 enc. in zone	5 enc. in zone	6 enc. in zone	7 enc. in zone	8 enc. in zone	9 enc. in zone
1 zone enc in queue	11.11%	7.69%	5.88%	4.76%	4.00%	3.45%	3.03%
2 zone enc in queue	16.67%	10.00%	7.14%	5.56%	4.55%	3.85%	3.33%
3 zone enc in queue	33.33%	14.29%	9.09%	6.67%	5.26%	4.35%	3.70%
4 zone enc in queue		25.00%	12.50%	8.33%	6.25%	5.00%	4.17%
5 zone enc in queue			20.00%	11.11%	7.69%	5.88%	4.76%

Percent chance to draw each encounter that is not in the queue

u \ e	3 enc. in zone	4 enc. in zone	5 enc. in zone	6 enc. in zone	7 enc. in zone	8 enc. in zone	9 enc. in zone
0 zone enc. in queue	33.33%	25.00%	20.00%	16.67%	14.29%	12.50%	11.11%
1 zone enc. in queue	44.44%	30.77%	23.53%	19.05%	16.00%	13.79%	12.12%
2 zone enc. in queue	66.67%	40.00%	28.57%	22.22%	18.18%	15.38%	13.33%
3 zone enc. in queue		57.14%	36.36%	26.67%	21.05%	17.39%	14.81%
4 zone enc. in queue			50.00%	33.33%	25.00%	20.00%	16.67%
5 zone enc. in queue				44.44%	30.77%	23.53%	19.05%

NS13 Queue Manipulation

There are some ways of increasing or decreasing the odds of encountering given monsters.

• Copying can be used to repeat a combat encounter against any normal monsters upon which the item is used.
• On the Trail ups the odds of encountering the monster being trailed.
  • Some less-powerful variants of On The Trail include the Nosy Nose familiar, Jarlsberg's Staff of the Cream of the Cream, Pete's Make Friends and Gallapagosian Mating Call.
• Banishing a monster from an area.

Queue Manipulation sources

The following is a list of all methods of queue manipulation that are not true banishes. Collectively, they are known as "sniffs".

Source	Source type	Additional copies	Suppresses queue rejection?	Duration	Notes
On the Trail	Skill - Transcendent Olfaction	+3	Yes	Until next cast
Staff of the Cream of the Cream	Chefstaff jiggle - Avatar of Jarlsberg	+2	Yes	Until next cast
Make Friends	Skill - Avatar of Sneaky Pete	+2	No	Until next cast
Curse of Stench	Skill - Actually Ed the Undying	+3	No	Until next cast
Long Con	Skill - Snake Oiler	+3	Yes	Until next cast
Perceive Soul	Skill - Dark Gyffte	+2	No	30 adventures
dinosaur pheromone kit	Combat item - Fall of the Dinosaurs	It's complicated	n/a	20 adventures	Uses a horrifying math function to increase the chances of the targeted dinosaur type
Motif	Skill - Jazz Agent	+2	Yes	Until next cast
Hunt	Skill - Wereprofessor	+3	Yes	Until next cast?
Get a Good Whiff of This Guy	Familiar skill - Nosy Nose	+1	No	Until next cast	Only applies while Nosy Nose is your current familiar
Gallapagosian Mating Call	Skill - Illustrated Mating Rituals of the Gallapagos	+1	No	Rollover
Hold Hands	Skill - August scepter	+1	No	Until you've encountered 3 copies
Offer Latte to Opponent	Skill - latte lovers member's mug	+2	No	30 adventures
Daily Affirmation: Be Superficially interested	Combat item - New-You Club Membership Form	+3	No	80 adventures
Red-Nosed Snapper	Familiar	+2 to target phylum	No	Until changed
A Beastly Odor	Potion - The Beast Within™ candle	+2 to Beasts	No	40 adventures
Ew, The Humanity	Potion - Scent of a Human™ candle	+2 to Dudes	No	40 adventures
Monkey Point	Skill - cursed monkey's paw	+2	No	Until next cast	Must have used exactly 4 monkey wishes that day
balanced antler	Weapon	-1 to Beasts	No	While equipped	Beast monster encounters are re-rolled, just once
McHugeLarge Slash	Skill - McHugeLarge left pole	+3	Yes	Until next cast or rollover
Try to Remember	Skill - Time is a Möbius Strip

Notes

• The adventure queue does not reset at rollover.
• The adventure queue can have duplicates. If you meet 5 dairy goats in a row, the combat queue contains 5 dairy goats and no other encounters.
• Choice adventures (even ones that result in combats, like in The Haunted Bedroom) count towards the non-combat queue only.
• The adventure queue cannot be manipulated at all on the Secret Tropical Island Volcano Lair, neither by using Transcendent Olfaction nor by using banishing or scaring items. (Monsters from this lair can still be copied, though.)
• Options that skip choice adventures without consuming an adventure prevent the encounter from being added to the adventure queue.
• Straight-forward computer implementations of the algorithm (including KoL's) have very tiny biases in the random selection procedure that can be ignored for all practical purposes.

History

• The queue lengths changed from 3 encounters to 5 encounters in Fall of 2006.
• Prior to NS13, all zones shared the same two queues. If a player entered a zone for the first time, or with 5 of each encounter flavor from some other zone, there would have initially been zero, then one, ... applicable encounters in the queue.
• After NS13, the adventure queue was changed in a way that -- according to Jick -- makes abusing it impossible. Each zone now has two queues, one for combats and one for noncombats.