Hardcore Strategy

The Hermit humbly requests that this page be rewritten or expanded. This guide, as well as many of its links, is extremely out of date, thanks to major changes in the game since, and previous to, 2011. Needs massive overhaul.

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 covers information you will want to consider for hardcore speed ascensions. The softcore speed guide is on the Ascension Strategy page. RoyalTonberry has written a hardcore walkthrough that is NS13-compliant and very effective. View the discussion thread for the outline here.

General Strategy

This guide assumes your overall goal is to minimize day count first, and turn count second. (Minimizing day count serves two purposes: it allows you to ascend more times in a given span of days, thereby perming skills faster; and it's how the leaderboards are structured.)

Fill 'Er Up!

The best way to reduce day count is to get more turns every day. This means you want to eat, drink, and spleen the best quality food, booze, and... spleen... available every day. During the early levels, there is a feedback loop: you need to be higher level to consume higher-quality stuff, and the higher-quality stuff helps you get the turns to become higher level. Making a Meat maid early in the run helps too.

No Rest For the Weary

If you are Beaten Up, restore your health using items or spells instead of resting. If you don't have Otter or Walrus tongue, find somewhere useful to adventure safely with your reduced stats, or use the turns crafting items you will need for your run. Herbs are one option for restoring HP as a Muscle class, but they hurt your spleen, preventing you from filling it with adventure-giving goodness, so consider them a last resort. Without healing skills, Doc Galaktik's Ailment Ointment is the best bargain, unless you have already completed Doc's Quest, in which case the Curative Nostrum is cheaper per HP (and also avoids losing Meat to round-off errors). Characters who have healing spells will normally find casting those is more Meat-efficient than purchasing anything from Doc (contingent on having a source of MP... see below).

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 the more efficient Knob Goblin seltzer (as well as many other handy elixirs). At level 11, you can also buy black cherry soda in the black market (this is the same efficiency as seltzer, but isn't combat-usable like seltzer is). Moxie class characters with Superhuman Cocktailcrafting permed can make tonic water a few times a day early in the run. 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 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. Skip the zones you don't need to do. Cutting out unnecessary adventures reduces both turn and day count.

Familiar? Yeah, I guess I know them all right

There are three basic categories of useful familiars: Volleyball-type (Frumious Bandersnatch, Cheshire Bat/Cymbal-Playing Monkey/Nervous Tick/Hunchbacked Minion, Spirit Hobo/Gluttonous Green Ghost, Ancient Yuletide Troll, Jill-O-Lantern, Blood-Faced Volleyball, Llama Lama etc.); Item drop (Jumpsuited Hound Dog, Slimeling,Green Pixie, Coffee Pixie/Attention-Deficit Demon/Jitterbug, the Dandy Lion, any of the five Elemental Gravy Fairies, the Crimbo Elf, the Baby Gravy Fairy, etc.); and Spleen-filling (Llama Lama, Baby Sandworm, Rogue Program, Green Pixie). Use an item drop familiar whenever you need an item (which will be somewhere between a third and half of the time). Use a spleen-filling familiar whenever you need a spleen consumable. Use a volleyball-type when neither case applies. The Green Pixie and Llama Lama are exceptions, as there are stats to be had in The Worm Wood or in roach form. Generally, Mr. Store familiars beat their mundane counterparts. 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. At high levels, a sombrero might outperform a volleyball, though the volleyball hybrids may bring benefits that might outweigh a few stats. If you've got the skills to handle it, the Baby Bugged Bugbear can be one of the best stat-gain familiars in its +20 ML configuration.

Starfishing (or other familiar tricks) to restore MP should be done as needed, using whichever familiar coincides with your other goals. If you need an item and MP, then use a Slimeling or Dandy Lion. If you don't need items, then consider a familiar that gives stats and MP, such as the Spirit Hobo. If you need MP in a hurry, an elementally aligned starfish (like the Midget Clownfish -- does double damage, and therefore restores double MP, in the Friars' Quest) can speed things up. The basic Star Starfish itself is not to be overlooked, however, if you have nothing better available. It never runs out of fuel, it does solid physical damage, and everyone in Hardcore has one already.

For low-skilled characters, strong attacking familiars may have benefits to consider despite from the lack of item drops or stats. 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.

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 with a heavier item drop familiar, or after obtaining items that improve your item drop skills; the Knob Goblin eyedrops, miner's helmet and makeshift cape are a few possibilities.

Gladiator, No!

Spending 5 turns in the Arena is generally considered a waste in NS13 due to the diminishing returns from increased familiar weight. If you have access to the Bugbear Pens, you might consider pursuing the annoying pitchfork instead, but even this isn't universally acclaimed.

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. 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). Likewise, Ben-gal Balm boosts your Muscle, which can be a godsend for Muscle classes, or a situationally useful add-on for Myst and Moxie classes. Wear your shiny ring, badass belt, pirate fledges, Bonerdagon necklace (if you got a hemp string to drop), etc. as soon as you can. Know which MCD-analogue settings give which boss drops, and plan for the ones that will help you. Lucky equipment drops like the f3d0r4, worn tophat, mesh cap, etc. can also help, although you'll rarely want to spend turns farming one.

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) might 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.

Always use stench protection when opening doors in the Daily Dungeon. This means don't smash or sell (or feed your slimeling) your harem veil if you lack elemental resistance skills. Also bear in mind that you'll need a Dungeons of Doom potion at the lair, so you might end up getting the zap wand anyway. Many players consider the zap wand 100% necessary, and only do the two mandatory Daily Dungeon trips.

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:

• Epic Weapons like the Rock and Roll Legend (accordion for NS lair and AT buff lengthener) and stone banjo (stringed instrument for NS lair instead of going for the acoustic guitarrr)
• Save one for the NS lair in case you need a pack of chewing gum
• The "Fun" House for three boxen to make your campground servants
• Knob Goblin Kitchens (reagent dishes or missing chow mein ingredients -- although sniffing hellions is preferred if you have the skill)
• Knob Perfume (if the Harem girls refuse, and if you have no He-Boulder)

Music to my ears.

After perming 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 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. If you have leftover Teleportitis after getting the plus sign, burn it off in the Daily Dungeon, the Barrels, the Shore, the Sewer, or meatsmithing. 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
• 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

• Safe Adventuring
• Noblesse Oblige's Kingdom Calendar
• Cisco's Door Code Generator
• Kingdom of Loathing Familiar Tool by The Rye, a Cake-Shaped Arena optimizer

Ascension Path Strategy

The one thing adventurers need to carefully consider are the level requirements of the food and drink items available. It can be 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, the rewards from the Typical Tavern Quest can be improved using Advanced Cocktailcrafting for a huge stat and turn boost, but these improved drinks require you to be Level 4, which means you may be unable to consume them immediately following the quest.

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 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 (see 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.

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 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.

I Wanna Quesadilla

If you have access to Inside Degrassi Knoll 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 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 having 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.

If you are going to mix Advanced Cocktailcrafting items, it may be beneficial to create a bartender for your campground. 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. 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. Choosing an Inside Degrassi Knoll sign can make a Meat Maid much easier to obtain.

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 and take a few valuable skills with you.

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

There are 9 moon signs: Three that boost your gains in a specific stat, and three each that allow access to a specific area. Muscle and myst classes will probably benefit most from their Little Canadia sign, moxies may find their Inside Degrassi Knoll the most beneficial.

Inside Degrassi Knoll

Degrassi Knoll becomes 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: Boosts muscle stat gains, plus +20% Physical Damage
• The Wallaby: Boosts myst stat gains, plus +20% Spell Damage
• The Vole: Boosts moxie stat gains, plus +20% Combat Initiative, +20 Maximum HP/MP

Area Overview

Degrassi Knoll makes it easy to create a meatcar and meat maid. Oxycore players will find the easy meat maid parts especially beneficial. In addition, Innabox's free smithing allows players to create Epic Weapons and Roll and Roll Legends without spending turns.

Little Canadia

Little Canadia opens up in the southwest part of Seaside Town.

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:Boosts muscle stat gains, plus familiar weight, +5 lbs
• The Opossum:Boosts myst stat gains, plus +5 free adventures per day (with first food)
• The Marmot:Boosts moxie stat gains, plus one free ten-leaf clover per day.

Area Overview

Little Canadia allows you to make jewelry. While you probably won't (the 500 meat per jewel is usually more beneficial), learning the recipes is necessary for the relevant recipe trophy. Chez Snootée may have occasional food useful for filler, but these are usually options only appropriate for desperate times.

The Gnomish Gnomads' Camp

The Gnomish Gnomads' Camp appears 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: Boosts muscle stat gains, +20% Meat from Monsters
• The Blender: Boosts myst stat gains, +5 free adventures (with first booze of the day)
• The Packrat: Boosts moxie stat gains, +10% Items from Monsters

Area Overview

Players without cocktailcrafting skills can benefit from the easy access to booze from the Microbrewery 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