Hardcore Strategy

Contents
General Strategy Ascension Path Strategy Non-Pathed Ascensions Teetotaler Ascensions Boozetafarian Ascensions Oxygenarian Ascensions Star-Sign Strategy Muscle Signs Mysticality Signs Moxie Signs

This guide is only on Hardcore speed ascension strategies. The softcore speed guide is on the Ascension Strategy page.

General Strategy

Do Not Rest / Beaten Up

If you are Beaten Up, restore your health using items or spells instead of resting and find somewhere useful to adventure safely with your reduced stats, such as The Sewer. Cost Analysis of Restoring HP and MP shows that for Muscle classes, Medicinal Herb's medicinal herbs are the best option for restoring HP; other classes should use Doc Galaktik's Ailment Ointment, unless you have already completed Doc Galaktik's Quest for Herbs, in which case the Curative Nostrum is cheaper per HP (and also avoids losing Meat to round-off errors). Mysticality classes who have healing spells will normally find casting those is more Meat-efficient than purchasing anything from Doc. Tongue of the Walrus also removes Beaten Up at the low cost of 10 MP and is something to look into as you ascend.

Low MP

Cost Analysis of Restoring HP and MP identifies the best store-bought MP restorers. If you are low on MP, invest in magical mystery juice if you have access to it, or otherwise Fizzy Invigorating Tonic from the Doc Galaktik's. Obtaining the Knob Goblin Elite Guard Uniform (easy via a semi-rare) lets you purchase slightly more efficient Knob Goblin seltzer (as well as many other handy elixirs). If you have a larger MP pool that needs to be filled and don't have the Meat to finance it, you can make use of the Star Starfish Trick, though this means you'll have to use a suboptimal familiar for a few turns.

Know Your Way

Know which items you need for the journey through the Sorceress' Lair and make sure you adventure intelligently to get as many of them as possible while still maximizing stat gains.

Familiar? Yeah, I guess I know them alright

Every Hardcore ascender should have a Volleyball-Type (Cheshire Bat/Cymbal-Playing Monkey/Nervous Tick/Hunchbacked Minion, Ancient Yuletide Troll, Spirit Hobo/Gluttonous Green Ghost, Jill-O-Lantern, Blood-Faced Volleyball, Llama Lama in that order) familiar handy for much of their ascension; otherwise, progression through the lower levels in particular will be far too slow. Use item-drop familiars (the Green Pixie, Coffee Pixie/Attention-Deficit Demon/Jitterbug, the Dandy Lion, any of the five Elemental Gravy Fairies, the Crimbo Elf or the Baby Gravy Fairy in that order) only in the rare situations where obtaining an item quickly is far more important than stat gains. The Green Pixie is something of an exception, as there are many benefits to be had in The Worm Wood. The best choice among the elemental fairies is the Sleazy Gravy Fairy, because you can get the hot pink lipstick in The Sleazy Back Alley easily.

Examples of when an item-drop familiar is the better choice include:

• Backfarming in an area that is below your adventuring level, in order to get out of there as quickly as possible.
• Adventuring in a location you cannot comfortably stay in (like the Hole in the Sky) in order to get everything you need as soon as possible.
• To obtain a food/drink related item when nearing the end of your turns for the day. The most obvious example of where this may make sense is if you're in the Kitchens, just can't seem to get one of the foods needed to make a reagent dish, and there aren't any clovers available. For Mysticality classes, it can be helpful obtaining herbs or the components to the Filthy Hippy Disguise in order to complete chow mein to eat today. Another possibility is getting hellion cubes with which to make food, or getting the items to complete Doc Galaktik's Quest for Herbs, in the Copse of the Deep Fat Friars.

Strong attacking familiars may have benefits to consider apart from the lack of stats they directly give. NPZR/Cocoabo, Spooky Pirate Skeleton, Imitation Crab/Pair of Ragged Claws and Star Starfish type familiars can allow victorious combats in harder areas, particularly as they can delevel, stun, or rip through monsters more effectively than you can at early levels. This is not without risks, of course; sometimes they sit idly by while you get beaten up, but there are direct stat advantages for adventuring in areas at or slightly above your capabilities that should be considered situationally.

Limited time Mr. Store familiars have unique advantages, and many of the above familiars (the Ancient Yuletide Troll, Spirit Hobo, Gluttonous Green Ghost, Jill-o-Lantern, Crimbo Elf, and Green Pixie) are no longer available. The Pygmy Bugbear Shaman (Mr. Store item from August 2005) gives both stats and item drops: however, the MP cost of using it can make it a problematic choice, especially with classes that do not have access to magical mystery juice, and this cost gets greater the heavier it gets. Therefore, alone among the volleyball-type familiars, it is not a good choice as your main familiar. However, with a character who has MMJs and a lot of Meat, the Bugbear Shaman can be a very good familiar for a few turns of farming for items without sacrificing your stats. If you can get hold of a purple snowcone as well, or a plexiglass pith helmet, this will also mitigate the MP cost of a Bugbear greatly. Treat it as an occasional item-farming familiar that doesn't sacrifice your stat gains, rather than a full-time stat-gaining familiar that can also get you items.

Adventure Management / RNG Cursing

It's important not to skip an area that you need an item drop from, but it's doubly important not to put so much time into that area that you've dug yourself into a hole looking for said item. Know when to cut your losses and move on; there will be time later to try again without it affecting your run as strongly. It's important to quickly get to the better areas for better stat/Meat gain. Spending 30 adventures at the Outskirts of Cobb's Knob looking for a chef's hat is very bad if that keeps you from reaching the areas with the ingredients you meant to cook that day. Also, you can return to these areas after obtaining items that improve your item drop skills; the lucky rabbit's foot and miner's helmet are two possibilities.

Gladiator, ahoy!

One strategy is to visit the Cake-Shaped Arena early in your ascension and do as follows: optimize a battle for your item-drop familiar and have it win 9 battles, then switch out and win the 10th arena battle with your stat-gain familiar to get its +5 equipment (or a lead necklace for +3). This not only levels your item-drop familiar and makes it effective when you need it, but also gives your stat-gain familiar a weight-increasing item. These benefits might outweigh the cost of the arena battles. If your previous ascension was a hardcore one, it's normally possible to do this before you played a single turn if you sell two of the stones from the pork elf goodies sack.

Gladiator, no!

On the other hand, spending 10 turns in the Arena was often not worth it in a fast hardcore run prior to NS13. After NS13, runs are longer, but due to the diminishing returns from increased familiar weight, getting familiar equipment remains a practice of dubious value.

Stat Boosting Equipment Saves Lives

Make do with whatever you can to survive. For Muscle and Moxie classes, it should be a priority to acquire the appropriate Epic Weapon when clovers are available. Dripping meat weapons and Kentucky-fried weapons will give you a significant stat boost relative to your level. Make use of sticky meat pants if you come across the spider webs, or Knob Goblin Uberpants if you have a clover. Hair spray provides a 15% Moxie boost for 3 turns, a very cheap and effective way to boost your Moxie (only 24 Meat for a can, or 8 Meat per turn).

Saved By the Daily Dungeon

The Daily Dungeon might be attempted as soon as your stats are around 25 each, but you'll need them to be in the low-40s before you've got a good chance of passing most days. The monsters are always easy, as long as you make sure to kill the Apathetic lizardman with an item that doesn't touch him. Repeated elemental tests can do damage that leaves you Beaten Up, but they're still passable with time. The hard part is getting past the stat tests. See the Daily Dungeon Stat Tests page for more information about their requirements. It may be helpful to check out the tests for the day in advance, via another character, chat, or an on-line resource like Noblesse Oblige's Kingdom Calendar to determine whether today's test series will be easy or difficult for you to pass. Sometimes you get lucky and there's nothing to stress your lowest stat. Try to obtain your keys as early as possible, which usually means your first try at the end of Day 2 of a no-path ascension. Those aiming for a 5-day ascension (as fast as you'll get without major skills and practice) will hit the Daily Dungeon late on day 2, on day 3, and early on day 4; that way, you'll know at the beginning of the day if you have a complete set of keys. If you do not have all the keys by the time your character is nearing the end of level 9, look into purchasing a wand to make sure you're not held up by bad RNG numbers. If you have a wand, there's a trick to let you get through even with only two keys; see the Hardcore Checklist page for more information. For those who don't have skills like Elemental Saucesphere which add protection from all the elements, it's a better idea, speedwise, to take the damage rather than spend turns farming for resistance.

Stat Days / Moon Gazing

Using things like the meat globe, stat script, and Chest of the Bonerdagon are best saved for the stat day that coincides with your class's primary stat. Accordion Thieves and Disco Bandits would want Moxie day, Seal Clubbers and Turtle Tamers would want Muscle day, and Saucerors and Pastamancers would want Mysticality day. When choosing which class to ascend to, take the moon phases into account. The optimal setup has the stat days on the last day or two of the time you're expecting the run to take.

Gym? No.

Stats are best gained by adventuring. Using the gym doesn't give you nearly as many stat points as adventuring would. The only exception to this would be encountering drunkenness due to a mistake and needing to spend adventures so as to not go over the 200 limit.

Autosell = Good.

Don't be afraid to get rid of items that you don't need for your run. Keep outfits that you may need intact, but feel free to autosell things that you don't require more than one or two of. All they are doing is sitting in your inventory, and if you're low on Meat, selling them fulfills a much better purpose for you. Keep in mind, however, that you may not need to autosell items that much if you are adventuring properly. Also, you may be able to change some items into more useful ones later by Zapping. Do not feel like you need enough Meat to purchase every skill for your class; get by with what you can. Keep in mind that you can use a clover to obtain 1000 Meat from the treasury, but you might wish to spend the clover on other things.

Clovers, Clovers, Everywhere.

Clovers are amazingly useful in many different areas in hardcore. Here are some of the primary places they can be used:

• Knob Goblin Kitchens (reagent dishes or missing chow mein ingredients)
• Epic Weapons like the Rock and Roll Legend (accordion for NS lair and AT buff lengthener) and stone banjo (string instrument for NS lair instead of going for the acoustic guitarrr)
• Skeleton '11' Roll (safety precaution)
• Knob Perfume (if the Harem girls refuse)
• Outskirts of Cobb's Knob (Knob Goblin Uberpants)
• Knob Treasury 1k Meat (fast Meat best used to buy missing but essential early skills).

Music to my ears.

After hardcore permanently obtaining Moxious Madrigal or other Accordion Thief skills, most players create a Rock and Roll Legend when they get the chance. That's normally the best use of the one clover that you get when ascending now on your first day.

A Zap a Day

There are several spots where you might find it justifiable to purchase a wand for Zapping. The most popular is when it's obvious The Daily Dungeon isn't going to give you the 3 keys you need to ascend before you're done leveling up. If you jump into The Enormous Greater-Than Sign as soon as it opens in the middle of level 7, you won't take too bad of a stat hit adventuring there. The most frustrating part of getting a wand is when you get Teleportitis before you've gotten the plus sign. Unfortunately, the giant pinky ring (obtained from the Strange Leaflet Quest) is no help here because it only prevents negative status attacks, whereas Teleportitis is gained from a non-combat adventure. In order to keep from wasting those turns teleporting to low-level areas, note that you can use them up doing tasks like Cooking, Meatsmithing, or Cocktailcrafting until Teleportitis wears off. You might even pre-prepare parts of an item you expect to use later, like first-level Advanced Cocktailcrafting drinks you expect to get the final ingredient for later, or smith basic items you intend to upgrade with mining ingredients like the stone of eXtreme power or chrome ore. If you're out of anything useful to do, change to your item-drop familiar and teleport away; you may get one of the items you'll need in the Sorceress tower later (razor-sharp can lid, spider web). Once you have a wand, anytime you're at the end of the day and haven't used it yet you should try to find something to aim it at; other good uses for zapping in a HC run include:

• Converting multiples of one outfit item into a missing piece
• Changing Advanced Cocktailcrafting components into those that target your main stat better, or to match your available mixers
• Converting a useless hippy jewelry item into a handy piercing post
• Turning extra Valley scrolls into more useful ones
• Trying to get a missing letter (most likely another lowercase N after losing one in the tower)
• Zapping a ring of aggravate monster into a ring of conflict
• Zapping keys and stat-boosting equipment from the Daily Dungeon into the keys you need for the NS quest, or into stat boosting equipment that you need (like the Sneaky Pete's breath spray to increase your moxie).

For further ideas, see Hardcore Zapping Tips & Tricks

You, uh, you wanna use some goofballs?

Goofballs are very helpful in the hedge maze when you are close to ascending. Be very careful, however, as the Naughty Sorceress now does not remove Goofball Withdrawal and other negative effects. Being trapped with withdrawal is not a good thing, especially if you have to fight some angry topiary golems.

Flower Power, man.

Flower Power gives the same benefit as goofballs (and +20% Mysticality) without the cost of withdrawal. Flowers are easily attained in PvP and PvP doesn't pose any (real) risk to players in HC. With fermenting powder at 70 Meat, a shot of flower schnapps is a good way to get a quick 3-turn burst.

Chowing down

The chow mein dishes are some of the best food in the game. They also can take many turns to prepare, require both Pastamastery and Transcendental Noodlecraft skills, cost 1000 Meat to make, and are only available to Pastamancer and Sauceror classes who can access The Wok of Ages. The benefits of chow mein are substantial and it can be worth going a bit out of your way to prepare those dishes, especially on your class's stat day. But generally you should consider making chow a nice bonus when things line up for you, rather than something you should always make. A player with Saucecrafting and Pastamastery can cook lo mein without using the Wok of Ages.

Helpful General Links

• Noblesse Oblige's Kingdom Calendar
• Safe Adventuring or Cisco's (#427002) Moxie Look-Up List, Based on Kittiwake's (#515189) Values
• Cisco's Door Code Generator
• Kingdom of Loathing Familiar Tool by Xylpher(#540421), a Cake-Shaped Arena Optimizer

Ascension Path Strategy

The one thing adventurers need to carefully consider in the current NS13 Kingdom are the level requirements of the food and drink items available. Particularly since early level advancement is far slower than it used to be as well (mostly because familiar weights are reduced to 1 so you can't start each Ascension with a 20-pound stat gain familiar), it's very easy to run out of turns before you can eat or drink items that are aimed at a higher level than you're currently at.

For example, it used to be case that as soon as you finished the Typical Tavern Quest, you could improve the drinks given using Advanced Cocktailcrafting and get a huge stat and turn boost immediately. The improved drinks now require you to be Level 4, which means you can't necessarily do that anymore.

More significantly, reagent dishes used to be the primary food available as soon as you could reach the Knob Goblin Kitchens at Level 5. Since you can't eat those now until Level 6, the best you can do with the kitchen ingredients before 5 is an improved pizza -- a far lesser meal than a reagent dish. Similarly, you'll probably find something like boring spaghetti, Level 3 items, far more useful in the earlier parts of the game now than it used to be.

Non-Pathed Ascensions

Since you will have both food and booze at your disposal, non-path is the ascension of choice for those that are starting out and want to be able to achieve a fast run. In fact, it is strongly recommended to start with multiple non-pathed hardcore runs so you can get some key skills before attempting an Oxygenarian ascension. General strategy for a no-path ascension is as follows:

Booze Hound

• Muscle Sign: Muscle signs don't offer much in the way of booze save for six mushroom fermenting solutions, which when combined with the third-tier mushrooms (flaming mushroom, stinky mushroom, frozen mushroom) are very decent and better than the typical booze a Moxie sign would drink. The fourth-tier mushrooms (gloomy black mushroom, oily golden mushroom) on the other hand, make wines which surpass adventures-per-drunkenness of even drinks made with tiny plastic swords. However, since you only get 6 fermenting solutions, this isn't a very practical way of getting booze for your run.
• Mysticality Sign: Chez Snootée isn't going to be serving up any drinks anytime soon, so you're somewhat sunk here. You will get some booze for finishing the Tavern quest and may get some from your Guild in early ascensions, and the current organization of The Barrel full of Barrels can provide a useful source for medium-quality drinks.
• Moxie Sign: If you are approaching ascension with speed in mind, then a Moxie sign will allow you access to the Microbrewery. The Microbrewery will provide the alcohol you need to fill up every day and sometimes even bless you with especially salty dogs. The Beach will become active at Level 4 if you can make your bitchin' meatcar quickly.

Hungry Hungry Adventurer

• Food is measurably better than most booze, so you should eat as much as you can. Work to get to the Knob Goblin Kitchens (Level 5) as soon as practical; the Kitchens are even better if you have access to clovers, which will give you easy access to the ingredients you need to make reagent dishes. Reagent dishes are a good source of food once you reach Level 6 because the ingredients for them are readily available, and they are also not turn-intensive like chow meins are (two cook combines for a reagent dish compared to the five cooking operations for chow mein). You will find that chow mein typically cannot be eaten every day due to not having either the required mushroom or the required second piece (these should not be backfarmed due to poor stat gains).

Chef in the Box -- Huzzah?

• Muscle Sign: If you come across enough early ingredients and have the rest of the qualifications to make chow mein a large portion of your diet, then by all means farm for the chef-in-the-box. Chow mein can be a good choice for those who choose a Muscle sign because they can grow their own mushrooms instead of having to farm for them, so they only have to farm for one type of item, which in some cases can be extremely easy (such as bat wings). This strategy relies heavily on gaining the Hippy Outfit.
• Moxie Sign: It's harder to justify obtaining a chef-in-the-box in a properly prepared Moxie-sign hardcore run. You may get lucky and get most of the pieces while adventuring around -- if so, great -- but keep in mind that your best case scenario involves cooking reagent dishes every day once you can (two, normally Spaghetti with Skullheads and on occasion the others) and finishing off with a spicy enchanted bean burrito or another equivalent three-fullness food. Cooking a reagent dish only wastes two adventures. Depending on how strong your item-drop skills are, it could take you more turns to obtain the parts for a chef than it saves. The chef's hat and the disembodied brain are usually the harder parts to obtain, with the hat being in a very low stat gain area.
• All signs can partially offset the negative effect backfarming has on your stat gains, through the detuned radio, The Super-Secret Canadian Mind-Control Device, and The Annoy-o-Tron 5000. If, for example, you wanted to fight at Tower Ruins and you would normally be active in the Treasury, you could set the ML boosters to the level that would make the stat gains from the Tower monsters roughly equal to the stat gains from the Treasury monsters (view Kittiwake's Moxie List or Cisco's Moxie Lookup, take the higher number and subtract the lower -- see also Safe Adventuring). The moon sign ML boosters only go up to 10 (11 for the MCD), however, so this strategy is only effective in the early game.

Teetotaler Ascensions

Knob Kitchen, Ahoy!

A Teetotaler's life is horrible until they reach the Knob Goblin Kitchens. Your most important goal is to get there early enough in your runs in order to be able to cook reagent dishes once you reach Level 6.

Seconds? Thirds?

Stomach of Steel is the Teetotaler's version of Liver of Steel; it increases your maximum fullness by five. It lets you eat three reagent foods a day -- except if you don't have The Way of Sauce, you have to balance it out so you will have reagent potions at the Hole in the Sky and the Hedge Maze. You can use more reagents earlier if you calculate the use of Goofballs or Blood of the Wereseal -- just be very careful. It's also possible to get more reagents at the Laboratory, but the drop rate on those is low there.

Paté? Of course.

If you have just finished a Teetotaler ascension, eating paté at Level 9 is optimal

Alfred, prepare my dinner.

A chef-in-the-box can be very helpful for a Teetotaler if they go the chow mein route. This saves you reagents to use later on; however, chow mein may not be the optimal choice because of the difficulty of obtaining mushrooms (if you are not a Muscle sign) and other ingredients without wasting time in areas that will not give you optimum stat gains.

Full? Too bad, eat more.

If you can't finish off your fullness with what you have on hand, eat some fortune cookies. They'll finish off the fullness that you have left over even if they don't have the greatest adventures-to-fullness ratio, in addition to revealing Semi-Rare Adventures.

Ooh, Moons.

The moon signs that stand out as being beneficial for a Teetotaler are Mysticality signs and Muscle signs. Mysticality signs are very popular because of the availability of jewelry and Chez Snootée (which is better than fortune cookies when you don't have any better food). Muscle signs are popular because of the availability of mushroom farming for efficient chow mein cooking.

Muscle Sign?

If you are a Muscle sign without Pastamastery, a decent way to earn adventures is to do the warm mushroom loop in Degrassi Knoll. In it, you obtain 8 warm mushrooms every 2 days and cook them with flat dough to obtain spicy mushroom quesadillas. Not very good, but an acceptable substitute for chow mein.

-urp- Excuse me.

Chronic Indigestion is obviously a great skill to use as a Teetotaler. It is relatively easy to get, is able to do 20-25 hot damage in a normal battle, and the damage increases with a full Stomach of Steel to 25-30. Damage is doubled against cold and spooky monsters; if you are completely full and have Stomach of Steel, you will do 50-60 damage against them. This skill is especially useful against the ~120 HP Bonerdagon and 90 HP Yetis. It's also worth considering for use against the minibosses in the Hidden City.

Boozetafarian Ascensions

Drink, Drink, Drink!

Booze is your life. The ideal setup for a Boozetafarian is being born under a Moxie sign (for access to the Microbrewery), and having Advanced Cocktailcrafting and a Filthy Hippy Disguise. The drinks that you can make with Cocktailcrafting are generally better than the special in the Microbrewery -- although this depends on what is in stock at the time, since the Microbrewery may stock drinks like especially salty dogs. If you do drink the Advanced Cocktailcrafting drinks, make sure to drink IPAs from the Microbrewery to use the leftover drunkenness points.

Alcohol Poisoning? No Sir!

Liver of Steel increases your capacity to drink significantly; normally you would have to stop at 14 drunkenness, but you can now safely drink to 19. After drinking all your better drinks that give a 3 or 4 drunkenness each, use any ice-cold Sir Schlitz or Willers hanging around to drink to 19; even an Imp Ale may make sense. Normally to reach 19 you'll either drink six 3-drunkenness drinks plus a beer, or four 4-drunkenness Advanced Cocktailcrafting drinks plus a 3-drunkenness one. After you're out of adventures, make sure to end your day by drinking a final high-quality drink you made, or an Infinitesimal IPA. Every adventure counts; the fact that you can't use these last adventures that day doesn't mean you can't make use of them the next day.

Yeah, I'll have a glass of milk.

Investing in a bartender-in-the-box has become easier with the ability to gain a set of beer lenses at once from the Typical Tavern. If you are going to use the Advanced Cocktailcrafting items, it may be beneficial to create a bartender for your campground. A bartender is also very handy for creating flower schnapps, which is a great way of boosting your stats. Keep in mind, though, that you may spend a good number of turns trying to farm for the pieces, which could put you farther behind than just making the drinks by hand would have. When weighing that option, don't forget to factor in that adventuring at the Tavern trying to get the beer goggles adds drunkenness that reduces the numbers of turns you can gain by drinking. The longer your expect this run to take, the more sense a bartender makes.

Oxygenarian Ascensions

Have you tasted this air, man? This air is great.

Oxygenarian, a masochist is you! Make sure you make use of items that give you extra rollover adventures, such as a Meat Maid, dead guy's watch, Pagoda and chrome weapons (e.g., the chrome crossbow or better yet a sword behind inappropriate prepositions), since you are given only 40 turns a day. Muscle signs are preferable because of the ability to create a quick Meat Maid; however, the Mysticality sign's Jewelrymaking can be very helpful. Also, the Moxie sign allows you to construct a Clockwork Maid from Supertinkering; however the parts required to construct it have quite a low drop rate.

The moon shines just for you, babe.

Adventure using a full 200 adventures on your class's stat day. It'll speed up your Hardcore Oxygenarian run incredibly. It may be a bit boring not doing things in game for as much as 3 to 4 days, but hey, go hang out in chat and be social.

Your body can do only so much.

If you are in danger of going over the 200-adventure limit, spend as many adventures as you need doing non-combat tasks. If it's a clover day, spend some turns getting extra clovers.

What'dya mean you're thinking still?

If adventure management is a chore, then in a Hardcore Oxygenarian run it's a lifetime jail sentence. Improper turn management can turn your Oxygenarian ascension into a multi-month event that just won't ever end. By doing some normal hardcore runs, you can learn to manage your turns, take a few valuable skills with you, as well as bring a handy stainless steel item on your first Oxygenarian ascension.

Above all, stay organized.

It's easy to lose track of what you're doing during an Oxy-core run, especially if you have multis or a social life. If you aren't careful, you could end up spending half a week's adventures looking for something you already have. Try to keep some kind of checklist.

Smash, smash, smash.

Be sure to consult the Hardcore Pulverizing page for suggestions on how to get the most wad action out of your run.

Still crazy after all these years.

Even if you're not adventuring, Moxie classes with the Superhuman Cocktailcrafting skill should spend some time with Nash Crosby's Still every day. Turning ten soda waters into tonic water is a quintastic way to increase your MP cheaply.

Moon Sign Strategy

If you are planning to try your hand at speed ascending, looking for a certain item, trophy, or tattoo, or just trying to find the best fit for your play style, choosing the correct moon sign is incredibly important.

Muscle Signs

Being born under a Muscle sign turns the Degrassi Knoll into a mini-town instead of an adventuring area, and opens The Bugbear Pens once you have 13 in your primary stat.

Area Content

• The Plunger -- Combines items for free.
• Innabox -- Gives you the Untinker's screwdriver. Smiths items for free, except for items that require advanced skills.
• Mushroom Fields -- Allows for creation of mushrooms, which reduces backfarming for those that prefer chow mein. Costs 5000 Meat to set up, plus planting costs. Required if doing Mayor Zapruder's quests during the hardcore portion of your ascension.
• General Store -- Sells the items that normally drop in Degrassi Knoll, which makes it easy to build a bitchin' meatcar and a Meat Maid. It also sells the detuned radio, which allows you to increase the monster level of creatures in the kingdom by 1-10. Setting it to a higher number increases the amount of Moxie you will need to have to dodge an attack; creatures also hit harder and have higher HP. A setting of 4 increases stat gains by 1; 8 will increase stat gains by 2; 10 will give you a 50% chance of a third extra stat point per battle. It also causes bosses to drop certain items at certain settings.
• The Gym -- More powerful than the clan Muscle gym (though you really shouldn't be using it).
• Mayor Zapruder -- Gives various quests.
• Familiars & Equipment -- Stinky Gravy Fairy, limburger biker boots, Frozen Gravy Fairy, iced-out bling, Flaming Gravy Fairy, flaming glowsticks.
• Trophies -- Let My Bugbears Go!

The Mongoose

Occasionally gives bonus Muscle substat points at the end of combat (believed to be between 0-3).

The Wallaby

Increases your Familiar Weight by 0-3 lbs.

The Vole

Gives you an extra 0.5 chance of Critical hit. This stacks with all critical hit modifiers.

Area Overview

Muscle signs tend to be the sign of choice among hardcore speed ascenders because of the general store meaning easy meatcar and easy meat maid. Oxycore players will find the easy meat maid especially beneficial. Players that take the Teetotaler path have used the Mushroom Fields to reduce the amount of time spent backfarming for chow mein ingredients. It is important to note that the Muscle sign area requires six separate ascensions to get all of the content out of it (all three familiars and their specific equipment). The special trophy obtainable under this sign cannot always be obtained through pure effort, unlike the trophies for Moxie and Mysticality signs.

Mysticality Signs

Being born under a Mysticality sign opens the way to Little Canadia just north of the Seaside Town (on the town map, not the general map).

Area Content

• The Super-Secret Canadian Mind-Control Device -- Allows you to increase the monster level of creatures in the kingdom, much like the detuned radio, except it ranges from 1-11.
• Little Canadia Jewelers -- Allows the creation of supportive equipment for your ascension. Common choices are porquoise bracelet, baconstone pendant, or hamethyst bracelet.
• Chez Snootée -- Sells various food that is consumed upon purchase (generally bad food to eat if you have Pastamastery and Advanced Saucecrafting).
• The Institute for Canadian Studies -- More powerful than the clan Mysticality gym (though you really shouldn't be using it).
• Familiars -- Whirling Maple Leaf
• Tattoos -- Little Canadia Tattoo
• Trophies -- Boss Boss

The Platypus

Occasionally gives bonus Mysticality substat points at the end of combat (believed to be between 0-3).

The Opossum

Occasionally gives extra adventures from eating foods.

The Marmot

Very occasionally gives you a ten-leaf clover after non-combat adventures. (This includes ten-leaf-clover adventures as well.)

Area Overview

The Mysticality signs are popular for the ability to make jewelry. They are better for Teetotalers and Oxygenarians than for No-Path or Boozetafarians, because Canadia does not offer any booze directly (unless you adventure at the Outskirts of Camp Logging Camp or Camp Logging Camp, which you shouldn't do because you can normally spend your adventures in a better place).

Moxie Signs

Moxie signs will have access to The Gnomish Gnomads' Camp in the Desert Beach.

Area Content

• The Annoy-o-Tron 5000 -- Allows you to increase the monster level of creatures in the kingdom from 1-10.
• The Gnomish Micromicrobrewery -- Serves cheap, accessible (and sometimes very good) booze.
• Fragnk, the Regnaissance Gnome -- Teaches Gnomish Skills for 5000 Meat. These are Powers of Observatiogn, Gnefarious Pickpocketing, Torso Awaregness, Gnomish Hardigness, and Cosmic Ugnderstanding.
• Gnorman, the Supertinker -- Supertinkers items with items that drop from the Thugnderdome.
• Thugnderdome -- Adventuring area that drops items for Gnorman.
• Familiars -- Clockwork Grapefruit, MagiMechTech MicroMechaMech, Scary Death Orb
• Tattoos -- Gnauga Tattoo, Clockwork Tattoo
• Trophies -- Gadget Inspector, Jack of Several Trades

The Wombat

Occasionally gives bonus Moxie substat points at the end of battle (believed to be between 0-3).

The Blender

Occasionally gives extra adventures from drinking booze.

The Packrat

Sometimes increases base Meat drops from monsters by 10%. Meat from Monsters modifiers act on both the base drop and the packrat bonus.

Area Overview

The Moxie signs are the signs of choice for Boozetafarians. The easy access to booze from the Microbrewery adds a lot of adventures each day without much hassle. You can also pick up some skills from Fragnk, if you have the Meat. Teetotalers wouldn't get much of a benefit from this area, nor would Oxygenarians.

External Links

• A spreadsheet tool has been put together to help players decide which locations give the best stat gains.

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