Beginner's guide

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The Beginner's Guide

Welcome to the Kingdom of Loathing wiki! Although this guide is meant for players new to KoL, it assumes that you have completed the Toot Oriole Quest. Armed with that basic knowledge, you can use this wiki to discover more about how KoL works.

Although the wiki contains detailed explanations of various quests and puzzles, it can be more fun to figure them out on your own. Of course, if you get stuck, the wiki can help get you back on track.

Turns/Adventures

In KoL, adventures are a limit on the number of actions you can take each day. You already know how this works from the tutorial, but here are a few things to note.

Some activities, like shopping, do not cost you any adventures and can be performed at any time (except in the middle of a fight). Also, traveling between locations does not require the use of any adventures.

Most actions (like fighting a monster) use one adventure, but a few activities (like taking a vacation) use multiple adventures. These will be marked with their adventure cost in parentheses.

All players receive 40 adventures each day at rollover. Unused adventures are carried over to the following day (up to a maximum of 200), so don't worry if you are unable to use all of your adventures every day.

Some other common ways to gain adventures are listed below.

Food

As you discovered from the tutorial, eating food gives you more adventures. Some foods also give you stats. You can eat up to 15 fullness per day. Generally, simple foods (like fruits and cookies) are 1-2 fullness, while more complex foods (like burritos and pizzas) are 3-6 fullness. By default, your fullness level is not displayed by the game, so you will have to keep track of it on your own, or turn on the fullness counter, which is in the Interface section of the Options menu. This is useful, but it is not funny.

Not all foods are created equal! Besides having different fullness values, some foods are higher quality and will give you more adventures per fullness point than others. The quality is shown in the food's description; crappy is the lowest quality, followed by decent, good, awesome, and EPIC.

Food can be purchased from shops, dropped by monsters, and received as a quest reward, but many high-quality foods are crafted by players; see cooking for details. Basic food, such as casseroles, kabobs, pies, and tacos, can be crafted by any player with the oven received during the tutorial. Making pasta, sauces, and other advanced food requires special class skills, an upgraded oven, Fancy ingredients which take time to cook (unless you have help from a chef-in-the-box), and possibly access to a special location in your Guild Hall.

Booze

Booze is similar to food in many ways, but different in others. Like food, booze gives you more adventures. Also like food, there is a limit to how much you can consume in one day. Unlike food, drinking too much can have negative consequences. If you eat to your maximum fullness, you will suffer no ill effects, other than being unable to eat any more for that day; on the other hand, drinking to 15 or more drunkenness will leave you in a drunken stupor and render you unable to adventure usefully for the rest of the day (with some exceptions). An optional quest will allow you to raise your drinking tolerance by 5.

Different drinks have different drunkenness values, and some drinks give you more adventures per drunkenness point than others. Like food, each booze has a quality rating of crappy, decent, good, awesome, or EPIC.

Booze can be purchased from shops, dropped by monsters, and received as a quest reward, but much high-quality booze is crafted by players; see cocktailcrafting for details. Some booze, such as schnapps and simple cocktails made from basic booze and mixers such as fruit or soda, can be crafted by any player with the kit received during the tutorial. Making booze with garnishes or high-quality spirits requires special class skills, an upgraded cocktailcrafting kit, Fancy ingredients which take time to mix (unless you have help from a bartender-in-the-box), and possibly access to a special location in your Guild Hall.

Many players like to drink until they're one away from their drunkenness limit (14 by default, 19 later), spend all of their adventures, then end their day with a nightcap, a final drink which puts them over the drunkenness limit. The gained adventures can then be carried over to the following day.

Spleen

Although not explained in the tutorial, every player also has a hidden spleen counter, which limits the use of other powerful items. Spleen items have a variety of effects, such as giving you adventures, substats, and buffs, or restoring HP. The easiest way to obtain adventures from your spleen are to buy or make the various wads created by the Seal Clubber's Pulverize skill (twinkly wad, hot wad, cold wad, stench wad, spooky wad, sleaze wad).

Other Sources

• Items/Amenities: There are several pieces of equipment that give you free adventures per day when worn. Many are fairly hard to come by, so by the time you can get them, you will be well beyond the scope of this guide. Here are a few that you might come across:
  • Watches - This is a loose category of item that gives bonus adventures. Only one in this item category can be worn at one time. An easy one to get is the dead guy's watch, but there are ones that give up to +10 adventures! The catch is that you need to be wearing them at rollover for it to work.
  • Weapons - There are several weapons that can be found or created which boost adventures. Seal Clubbers may for example build a sword behind inappropriate prepositions or you might be given a chrome weapon as a quest reward. As with the watches, you must have these weapon(s) equipped at rollover in order to benefit from them.
  • Clan Rumpus Room furniture can also give adventures. A clan can have a calendar for +3 adventures per day, an inspirational bookcase for +5, and a +1 desk calendar.
  • Finally, a Meat maid installed at your campsite gives you 4 extra adventures at rollover.

A beginning player can expect to play about 100 adventures per day or more.

Quests

Your main Quests come from the Council of Loathing in the middle of Town. At each experience level, you become eligible for a new council quest, although some of the quests require you to have finished a previous quest. (For example, you won't receive the level 3 Typical Tavern Quest until you've finished the level 2 Spooky Forest Quest.)

In addition, you will find many side-quests available from people in your guild.

You have as much time as you need to complete any particular quest, so there's no need to rush.

Combat

A combat is always a 1 vs 1 affair (you against one monster), and typically takes one adventure. Some monsters are much, much stronger than others. Once you begin combat, initiative is rolled, determining who gets to act first. When you attack with your weapon, you have a certain chance to hit, based on your Muscle (for melee weapons) or Moxie (for ranged weapons). There is otherwise no advantage to "ranged" attacks (the monster can still attack you). If you hit the monster, you deal damage based on the Weapon's Power and your Muscle, if your Muscle exceeds the monster's defense.

When the monster attacks, its chance to hit is directly based on its attack stat and your Moxie. As such, Moxie is the primary defensive stat. If you are hit, Moxie determines how much damage you might avoid taking. Damage Reduction, Damage Absorption and Elemental Resistance also affect damage taken.

Upon winning a fight, you gain stats based on the monster level. Depending on the monster, you may also find some meat and possibly one or more item drops.

Other events that may occur in combat include:

• Fumble - This is one of the most damaging things that can happen at lower levels. You miss your attack and damage yourself. It happens 4.22% of the time. Certain items can negate this and are worthwhile to seek.

• Critical hit - You will occasionally get a critical hit which deals about double your normal damage output. A critical hit always hits; even if you're so weak that you have no chance of hitting the monster normally, you could still get a lucky shot in. There is a base 9% chance of a critical hit for the player. Some items and skills will increase this chance.

• Familiar does something - There are tons of familiars, many of which periodically do stuff in combat. Sometimes they attack, or give MP to the player, delevel the foe, etc.

Instead of attacking, you can take one of the following actions:

• Use a combat item - Several items exist which have various effects on the monsters. Many of these are beneficial to yourself and/or detrimental to the foe. Most combat items are consumed when used, but there are exceptions, such as spices.

• Use a skill - Players have a number of combat skills available with various effects. Each class starts with one or two combat skills for free, and all classes (except Accordion Thieves) can buy more from the trainer at the Guild Hall. Skills are often better than a standard attack and have no chance of fumbling. They usually cost a certain number of MP to use.

• Run Away - You can attempt to run from an encounter to avoid getting beat down. You still lose an adventure, though.

Your Character

There are six classes in the game. Seal Clubbers and Turtle Tamers are Muscle-based classes. Pastamancers and Saucerors are Mysticality-based classes. Disco Bandits and Accordion Thieves are Moxie-based classes.

Main Stats

• Muscle - This stat determines your maximum hit points, your chance of hitting with melee attacks, and the damage dealt with weapons (melee and ranged). Most melee weapons and shirts have minimum muscle requirements. Muscle is an important stat for all characters. Note that the two muscle-based classes gain a 50% hit point bonus -- a Seal Clubber with 80 muscle has more HP than a Pastamancer with the same 80 muscle.

• Mysticality - This stat determines your maximum MP, and increases spell damage which is important for the two spellcaster (mysticality-based) classes. Many accessories have minimum mysticality requirements. This stat is less important for non-spellcasters. The two mysticality-based classes also gain a 50% MP bonus.

• Moxie - Determines your defense -- how likely you are to be hit and also how much damage you take upon getting hit. It also determines your hit chance with ranged weapons. Note that muscle still determines ranged weapon damage, however. Most ranged weapons, hats and pants have minimum moxie requirements. Due to combat formulas it is possible to be almost invulnerable to being hit by a given monster with sufficient moxie. As such, moxie is one of the most important stats, even for muscle- and mysticality-based classes.

Stat Gains

By now you have adventured and noticed that you have gained an alarming variety of different oddly-named stats. Here is the deal: To advance a main stat (muscle, mysticality, moxie), a certain number of substat gains is needed in order to get 1 point of that main stat. Also, each main stat has many different substat names, as shown below for variety's sake:

• Muscle - Beefiness, Fortitude, Muscleboundness, Strengthliness, Strongness
• Mysticality - Enchantedness, Magicalness, Mysteriousness, Wizardliness
• Moxie - Cheek, Chutzpah, Roguishness, Sarcasm, Smarm.

In other words, gaining +5 Smarm is the same as +5 Cheek. It adds 5 subpoints to your moxie stat. When you have collected a certain number of these moxie substats, then you gain a single point of that stat. There are also many ways to add bonus stat points. The higher your main stat, the more points worth of substats you need to acquire for a point in your main stat. More on this below...

Levels and Advancement

You gain main stat advancement by getting the appropriate number of substats as described above. The most common methods of acquiring these are:

• Combat - Every fight will give a certain number of substat points, which are distributed as 50% to the primary stat, and 25% to each secondary stat. This is based on the monster level, as well as bonus stat gains.
• Non-Combat - Some non-combat adventures will give you a certain amount of a substat. This amount is typically based on the difficulty of the adventuring zone itself, though some scale based on your current level (to an upper limit), resulting in higher stat gains the higher your stats already are.
• Eating/Drinking - Most foods and booze grant substat points, in addition to giving you extra adventures.
• Other usable items - There is a huge variety of usable items, some of which grant substat points when they are used.

You gain levels by achieving a certain number of your main stat (which is determined by your character class). This increases as you level. From level 1 to level 2 only requires 2 points of your mainstat. Getting from level 9 to 10 requires many more points of mainstat advancement.

Your level is used to determine which quests you can go on, as well as what you can eat or drink. If you have not yet ascended, your character level also determines when you can buy/sell from other players (in town at the Mall or Flea Market) or join a Clan.

See Advancement for more information.

Mana Points

One note of importance is that your MP has a different name based on your class. Muscle classes have "muscularity points", Moxie classes have "mojo points", and Mysticism classes have "mana points". They all work the same, mechanically. You can replenish MP by drinking certain 'potions', adventuring with certain familiars, equipping certain accessories, and by resting at your campground or clan hall.

Hit Points

When you reach 0 HP, you are unable to adventure. You cannot actually die however or lose any meat or items. If you run out of HP in combat, you lose the fight (and the adventure/turn) and get a 'Beaten Up' status effect that halves your stats. You generally want to restore your HP by using an item, using a skill, or resting in your campground and then do something non-combat related or find some easy fights for a few turns until the Beaten Up effect goes away.

Equipment

You can equip one hat, one pair of pants, either a 2-handed weapon or a 1-handed weapon plus an off-hand item, three accessories, and one piece of familiar equipment. Later on, you can gain the ability to wear a shirt, or the ability to dual-wield 1-handed weapons. It is a good idea to keep one of everything you find until you become more familiar with the game, as it is common to swap equipment and find uses for things found long ago.

Like many adventure games, getting better equipment is important. Early on, you can head to the equipment shop in town to get basic equipment. At level 3, you can buy much better equipment from other players through the Flea Market. Items that are equippable can have many attributes. These are the most common:

• Power - For weapons, this factors into your character's offensive capability - namely, it makes you do more damage when you attack (approximately 10%-20% of the weapons' power); however, it does not increase your chance to hit. For hats and pants, and later shirts, this boosts your character's damage absorption, causing you to take less damage from opponents when they hit you.
• Stat boosts - Many items boost your Muscle, Mysticality, and Moxie. You should almost always equip items that boost your primary stat (or Moxie if you are boosting defense).
• HP Regeneration or MP Regeneration - Getting one of these items early on from the Mall or Flea Market is a great idea and well worth the investment. Every adventure you go on, these item types restore a certain amount of HP and/or MP. These are essential for offsetting HP/MP losses due to combat and skills, as HP/MP can normally only be recovered by resting or consumables which waste resources.
• Bonus Weapon Damage - This can be strong ability early in the game when opponent HP is low but your damage dealt is also low. In addition, sometimes elemental damage can be more effective against physically resistant foes or those vulnerable to a particular element. However, boosting Muscle and Moxie is generally more effective.
• Damage Reduction - This attribute directly subtracts from damage taken.
• Damage Absorption - This is not the same as Damage Reduction. Instead, Damage Absorption uses a formula which effectively reduces a percentage of your damage taken. Your main source of Damage Absorption will usually be the power of your hat and pants, so you don't need to place a high priority on obtaining more.
• Elemental Resistance - Reduces damage taken of that element by a certain percentage. Elemental Resistance is measured in ranks; Slight resistance gives 1 rank, So-so gives 2, Serious gives 3, and Stupendous gives 4. This is cumulative, so having slight resistance to an element from two sources is the same as having so-so resistance from one source.

Outfits

Outfits are special sets of equipment. When you equip an outfit, your character's avatar will change. Most outfits will give you a boost to your stats or allow you to visit some place previously forbidden. Clicking on the name of the outfit in an item's description or on your character sheet (if you're wearing the whole outfit) will tell you some of the bonuses you get for wearing it, but there may be other hidden bonuses as well!

The first outfits that you will probably find are the Knob Goblin Elite Guard Uniform or the Knob Goblin Harem Girl Disguise. Other recommended outfits include the Filthy Hippy Disguise which will allow you to buy produce from the The Hippy Store. Note that in your Inventory/Equipment tab there is even a dropdown box that auto-detects and equips any particular outfit that you have in your inventory. It is recommended to create a custom outfit with your normal equipment for easy swapping.

Wearing an outfit and visiting the Pretentious Artist will unlock a tattoo for your use.

Buffs/Skills

In the tutorial, you buffed yourself for 5 turns with one of your skills. Buffs always stack for duration. Hence, if you cast a particular skill 5 times, you would have 25 turns of buff instead of 5. Depending on your class, buffs can be a very good way of spending MPs. By level 3 or 4, you will likely want your buff active at all times. Whenever you have extra mana, you will probably boost yourself. Some classes are better at this than others, but you will quickly discover that some class combat skills are pretty weak. Buffing yourself is generally a better use of MPs for these classes.

You may notice that some buffs are castable on other players. A so-called Buffbot can help you take advantage of this fact. When used, the buffbut can cast many buffs on your character which will make the game significantly easier for you. Use this wiki to look up the buffs and see what they do. Note that some buffbots are used by sending a small amount of meat in exchange for buffs.

Familiar

Every character can have 1 active Familiar, and several more in storage. There is currently an overwhelming number of familiars available, but you will be given a Mosquito for your level 2 quest reward. This is a decent one that fights in combat with you and occasionally heals you. Familiars generally become more effective as they gain levels, which is represented by its weight. Familiars start at 1 pound and can grow to 20 pounds naturally, but their weight can be boosted even more by buffs and equipment. The Cake-Shaped Arena is a place where your familiar can adventure. Upon winning 5 fights there, you are awarded with a special item that takes a 'familiar equipment' slot and increases the effectiveness of your familiar.

If you want to try other familiars, here is a short list of some that are pretty easy to get by level 5 or less and are useful. Note that your Clan may have some of the lower cost familiar hatchlings available.

• Blood-Faced Volleyball: Gives you more stat gains per combat. Go to The Hermitage and get a seal tooth and a volleyball (see The Hermit, below, on how to make the trade). Use the Tooth, then use the Volleyball. Use the blood-faced volleyball item and you're done. Total cost is about 500 meat.

• Leprechaun: Gives more meat per adventure. Go to Spooky Forest with a ten-leaf clover in your inventory to get a bowl of lucky charms. (See The Hermit, below, on how to obtain the clover.) Eat it for a 50% chance to obtain a leprechaun hatchling. Repeat as needed. Costs about 400 meat plus about 2 turns.

• Baby Gravy Fairy: Increases the chance that items will drop after combat. You need to cook a fairy gravy boat with a knob mushroom, both of which are available in The Haiku Dungeon in The Dungeoneers' Association in The Big Mountains, to make a pregnant mushroom. (There also exist elemental versions, though they can not be acquired without ascending.)

• Ghuol Whelp: Restores HP and MP after battle. The fertilized ghuol egg hatchling is made by Meat Pasting a ghuol egg, available in The Misspelled Cemetary, with Spooky-Gro fertilizer, available in The Spooky Forest.

• Cocoabo: During battle, restores HP and MP, drops meat, and attacks and weakens enemies, at random. Can't be obtained through adventuring until Level 10, but available from a Clan Stash, the Flea Market, or the Mall before then. Cook 4 cocoa eggshell fragments into 2 large cocoa eggshell fragments, then cook those into a cocoa egg.

In addition there are 6 familiars that no adventurer should be without, since they are eventually needed for various quests. You should obtain them all before you adventure in the Lair of The Naughty Sorceress.

• Star Starfish: During battle, restores MP by attacking your opponent. Use a star chart, then use 6 stars and 4 lines, to obtain a star starfish hatchling. Very useful for Mysticality-based classes (Sauceror and Pastamancer), or anyone who spends a lot of MP on buffs or combat skills.

• Mosquito: Damages opponents and restores your HP. You should have obtained this by completing the Level 2 quest.

• Sabre-Toothed Lime: Attacks opponents. Meat-paste a lime (available from the Lemon Party Slot in The Casino in Seaside Town with some sabre teeth (available from The Goatlet on Mt. McLargeHuge in The Big Mountains) to obtain a sabre-toothed lime cub.

• Angry Goat: Attacks opponents, also will deal Stench Damage. Combine some goat cheese (available from The Goatlet on Mt. McLargeHuge in The Big Mountains) with some anticheese (available in the Mall, or infrequently from the Distant Lands Dude Ranch Adventure at The Shore, Inc. in Desert Beach) to obtain a goat.

• Levitating Potato: Blocks enemy attacks. A potato sprout may be purchased in The Dungeoneers' Association for one fat loot token obtained from Room 10 of The Daily Dungeon.

• Barrrnacle: Weakens monsters, to make it easier for you to hit them and harder for them to hit you. The barrrnacle hatchling drops from the crusty pirate on The F'c'le.

Another trick is to visit the Flea Market under the Familiars section to browse the various hatchlings for sale (though you should probably buy it from the Mall). This will give you an idea of approximately how rare (or difficult to assemble) each one is and you might be able to pick up a familiar much easier in this way.

Some familiars may share attributes with these basic familiars, and combine them with others. For example, a familiar might both increase stat gains like a Volleyball and increase meat drops like a Leprechaun. Many have other, unique functions as well.

There are several Common Metaphors that will hint at what an unusual familiar is doing. For example, if a familiar smiles at the end of a combat, it will usually give extra stats, like a volleyball; if it winks, it will usually boost meat drops, like a leprechaun; if it dances, it will usually boost item drops, like a gravy fairy.

There is also one other classification of familiars. These are ones that are bought at the Mr. Store (for 1 Mr. Accessory). These familiars have advanced capabilities and typically combine effects of multiple existing familiars or introduce new mechanics. These are favored by hardcore players as most Mr. Store items are unable to be equipped in a hardcore game. However, an advanced familiar is usable and provides a distinct advantage.

Guilds/Training

Every class has a Guild Hall. This guild is a visitable location in town filled with NPCs and should not be confused with a Clan, which consists of other player character members. Before you can do take advantage of your Guild's services, you must pass a test. Speak to your guild leader, adventure where he tells you to go until the task is complete, then return to your Guild Hall.

Each Guild has:

• A guild leader, who assigns your initial quest
• A trainer, who will sell you your class skills for meat
• Three members who will assign you quests
• A shop which sells class-specific items

Other Stuff

The Hermit

The Hermitage in the Big Mountains is the source of several unique items, such as the volleyball and seal tooth mentioned above, and the ten-leaf clover mentioned below. To trade with the hermit, you must have a hermit permit, and one worthless item (a worthless trinket, worthless gewgaw, or worthless knick-knack). The permit is available for sale at The Market in Market Square in Seaside Town; the worthless items are not available for sale directly, but you can get them by buying chewing gum on a string from the Market and using it.

Clans

You can very easily join a Clan starting at level 3. It is a good idea to do so, as it costs nothing and the reward is large. Many large and newbie-friendly clans advertise with the Clan Recruiter in Seaside Town.

In addition to the advice you can receive from other clan members in the Clan's Chat channel, you may be able to obtain useful items from the Clan Stash. How the Stash is run is different in every Clan, but in general, members can deposit items in the Stash to obtain Clan Karma, then spend that Clan Karma to withdraw different items from the Stash. This can be a good way to get certain items for quests and easy mid-level food and booze. In addition, items in the Clan Rumpus Room can give boosts such as bonus adventures per day, free meat, or free buffs, depending on what furnishings the particular clan has chosen to obtain.

Having a Clan VIP Lounge key (a special Mr. Store item) allows you to get access to the Clan VIP Lounge which is like the Rumpus Room, but with cooler and more powerful toys. The key is available in The Mall, but for a very high price. It is sold at Mr. Store whenever the monthly special is a VIP Lounge furniture item, so if you want to obtain one, waiting until this happens will be your best bet.

Clans also have basements which have dungeons that you should challenge when you are a high level.

Stat Days

The moons that you see in the upper-right corner are not just for flavor. If the combination is right, a 25% boost will be given to any gain to a certain stat that day.

• If Grimace is full, the bonus will be given to muscle stat gains.
• If Ronald is full, the bonus will be given to mysticality stat gains.
• If both moons are either a double waning crescent, or a double new moon, the bonus will be given to moxie stat gains.

Sometimes it's a good idea to save your adventures for a stat day to maximize your gains.

Holidays

On certain days of the Kingdom of Loathing Calendar, holidays are celebrated. These will happen once every KoL year (98 days), or approximately 4 times every real-life year. Several holidays are also celebrated on or close to the real-world holiday that they're based on. For example, St. Sneaky Pete's day will occur both on Starch 3 of the KoL calendar and March 17 (St. Patrick's Day) of the real-life calendar.

• Jarlsuary 1 - Festival of Jarlsberg - All skills cost 3 less MP to use, the party hat may be purchased and used.
• Frankuary 4 - Valentine's Day - Special Valentine's day themed items may be purchased from The Gift Shop.
• Starch 3 - St. Sneaky Pete's Day - Special adventures may be found by overdrinking and adventuring in a stupor. Green beer may be brewed.
• April 2 - Oyster Egg Day - Oyster Eggs are hidden throughout the Kingdom, the placement changes every holiday.
• Martinus 2 - El Dia de Los Muertos Borrachos - The Day of the Drunk Dead. Special combats will pop up throughout the day, allowing you to obtain special booze.
• Bill 3 - Generic Summer Holiday - A Reasonably-Sized Fountain opens for swimming. This will give you a special stat gain bonus depending on what floaty you use.
• Bor 4 - Dependence Day - The Market will sell fireworks which will grant a +50% stat bonus to one stat.
• Petember 4 - Arrrbor Day - The Arrrboretum opens up for adventuring, and the rewards of the prior Arrrbor Day may be found.
• Carlvember 6 - Labór Day - An extra 10 adventures will be given to you at rollover. This is applied after the cutoff point, it is possible to have 210 adventures.
• Porktober 8 - Halloween - You may go trick or treating for special candy.
• Boozember 7 - Feast of Boris - Your stomach's capacity is boosted by 15. In addition, special monsters will appear to fight.
• Dougtember 4 - Yuletide - You may listen to ghost stories and toast marshmallows.

There are a few holidays celebrated only according to the real-life calendar; most notably, April Fool's Day on April 1 and Crimbo during mid to late December.

Ten-Leaf Clovers

You might have noticed ten-leaf clovers at the Hermitage. They are interesting in that if you adventure with one in your inventory, they automatically trigger special 'super encounters' at many adventure locations, causing one clover to disappear. These are non-combat adventures, many of which give you a boost, far in advance of anything you would normally receive. A full list of these may be found here.

If you would like to save your clovers, you can 'use' them to change them into disassembled clovers and reassemble them as desired.

Semi-Rare Adventures

Once every 160-200 turns, each character has a chance to encounter a special adventure, known as a Semi-Rare. Most of these adventures are non-combats which give powerful consumable items, which can be used or sold for large amounts of meat, as desired. See here for details.

You can figure out when your next Semi-Rare adventure will occur by eating fortune cookies. Each time you eat one, the number of turns until your next Semi-Rare will be one of your three "lucky numbers"; thus, if you eat two in a row, you will usually have only one number appear in each cookie, and this is the number of turns until your next Semi-Rare.

Note that you cannot get the same Semi-Rare adventure twice in a row; once you get one, you have to get a different one before the first one will re-occur.

Buying and Selling

At level 3 you can buy stuff from The Flea Market in town. This is a pretty big deal, since you can boost your power significantly by picking up solid accessories, plus fill in any missing equipment slots. The best use of the Flea Market is to get food and booze. The stuff you find early on is pretty bad. For 100 meat each, you can buy fairly low-level food that is a big boon for you. For example, using Mad Train wine will give you 3 adventures for 3 drunkenness. However if you were to buy a margarita, you would obtain twice the adventures along with some substats.

At level 5, you can go to The Mall of Loathing and buy stuff instead. This is almost always cheaper, and recommended.

At level 9, you can purchase a store in the Mall for 50,000 meat. This should be done as soon as you can, as you can now sell to anyone and avoid the listing fees of the Flea Market.

Winning the Game/Ascension

KoL's designers have cleverly created a scheme for keeping your interest long past when you have 'won'. Once you beat the main quest, you can ascend and restart the game as any class. You start over as a level 1 character, and your items are put into a storage locker to which you will have restricted access. There are several choices to make when ascending, such as do you want your next life to be easy, or would you like to take on some voluntary restrictions and challenges in order to receive better rewards? Many items, trophies, adventures and areas are ONLY available ascended players that have given themselves restrictions. There are a variety of fun ways to play out your next life, and you can try them all!

When you ascend you will have the option to keep one of your skills from your current life to be permanently usable for all other incarnations. Hence, you can continue to build up your character by cherry picking skills from all 6 classes!

Ascension is fairly complicated, so be sure to read through the details before you shuffle off this mortal coil. Once you start ascending, if you are looking for strategy tips, you can try asking on the forums, or check Ascension Strategy for normal ascensions or Hardcore Strategy for hardcore ascensions. (Specific advice on those two pages can become outdated quickly, but the general advice is useful.)

Softcore, Hardcore, Aftercore, Moon Sign, and Path

If you visit the forums you will hear much discussion about this. As a quick primer however, here is an overview:

• Hardcore (HC) - An ascension where you are on your own with no usage of previously earned items or outside buffs.
• Softcore (SC) - A nickname for a "Normal" ascension. This is an ascension where you are on your own for 1000 turns, called a Ronin period. You have a limited ability to pull items you have already earned for usage though.
• Casual - An ascension where you can use all your existing items, meat, and outside buffs.
• Path - Can be No-Path (NP) with no restrictions, Oxygenerian (Oxy) with no booze or food, Boozetafarian (no food), Teetotaler (no booze), or a special challenge path.
• Moon Sign - One of 10 different things you can pick to provide an overall benefit and open a special adventuring area. Grouped into 3 Myst, 3 Moxie, 3 Muscle signs and a special Bad Moon sign.
• Aftercore - The common name for activities that occur after you have completed the Naughty Sorceress Quest and freed King Ralph XI but before you start a new ascension. These include high level areas such as the Basement, Clan Dungeons, The Sea, and others. They provide adventuring locations with high level loot as an alternative to ascending. After freeing the King, you are no longer bound by the restrictions of your lifestyle or path.

Alternate Interfaces and Tools

While a bit beyond the scope of a beginner's guide, it is worthwhile to note that several alternative interfaces exist for KoL which can automate actions, provide additional information or assistance during gameplay, or simply provide a more customized GUI for the player. In addition, many web-based tools can assist with particular portions of the game. More information may be found here.

Collectible

As an open-ended game, Kingdom of Loathing doesn't have concrete goals. Instead, players choose their own objectives. Many players choose to collect things, as a measure of their progress, or to show off.

Tattoos can be obtained from several sources; however, almost all of them will come from the Pretentious Artist (after completing his quest). You can also gain various tattoos from ascending, drinking a martini, visiting a Tattoo Shop, or eating some delicious salad. You can only show off one tattoo at a time.

Trophies can be purchased from the Trophy Hut for 10,000 meat a piece. There are numerous trophies in the game, and all have special requirements that you must have satisfied in order to be purchased. Many trophies can be obtained during a single ascension; however, it will take many ascensions in order to get them all. All your trophies are visible (by default) to players who click your name. You may hide some of them if you like, or rearrange the order in which they are displayed, by visiting your trophy case in your campsite.

Items may be placed into a Display Case and arranged onto shelves. Some players collect large numbers of a single item, or a few items. Some players collect as many different items as possible. Some players put the items on the shelves to create humorous arrangements, etc.

The familiars in your terrarium are also visible to other players by default (though you can hide them, in the account menu). Some people like to collect as many familiars as possible, and show off their terrariums. Some players like to give clever names to their familiars.

Your permanent skills are not visible to other players by default, but they can be marked visible in the account menu. Some people take pride in their large numbers of "permed" skills.

Strategies and Guides (Warning: Spoilers)

Gameplay Hints

If you want a bit of extra direction on how to more efficiently play during your first few days, read these tips.

• Visit The Dirt-Walled Hovel of The Pretentious Artist on the Wrong Side of the Tracks in Seaside Town immediately. His quest takes you to three different adventure locations and will start to give you Tattoos. In addition, he will buy the rat whiskers which you will get later on for 50 meat each.

• One path through the Arboreal Respite adventure in The Spooky Forest will lead you to the famed Vampire Hunter G, who will give you wooden stakes. If you have these equipped while you fight the Vampires in the forest, you will get vampire hearts, which you can turn in to Vampire Hunter G to obtain bottles of used blood, which will give you stat points when used. You can also combine the stakes with a bar skin to make an improved tent for your campground.

• Sales of ten-leaf clovers from the Hermit are limited to a small number per player per day. They cost less than 300 meat each to obtain and can be sold in the Flea Market or mall for much more. More advanced players can make good use of these clovers and will pay for the privilege.

• At level 4, visit your Guild. You can pick up your Epic Weapon quest which is relatively easy to accomplish, has no combat required, and will boost your character significantly.

• The beefy bodyguard bats in The Bat Hole are particularly valuable for their high meat drops. When you kill the Boss Bat, you will not be able to fight bodyguard bats anymore; take advantage of them while you can by bringing your Leprechaun along.

Character Guides

This section briefly describes the playstyle of each character class and provides some hints on how to get the most out of your character. It should be noted that as players advance, they can permanently learn skills from any class, thus customizing and developing their character as desired. Therefore, this section is simply for basic information when considering what class to play and for those who are playing a class for the first time.

At the broadest level the classes can be divided into three specialities: muscle, mysticality, and moxie. Each of these specialities has a guild, a patron figure, an aligned early level area, and post-ascension area.

Muscle	Mysticality	Moxie
Seal Clubber Hit first, hit hard. Makes best weapons.	Pastamancer Has a range of attack spells. Makes best foods.	Disco Bandit Evades attacks, breaks opponent with dance combos. Makes best drinks.
Turtle Tamer Hits hard, resists damage. Makes best armor.	Sauceror Has a range of attack and defense spells. Makes best potions.	Accordion Thief Evades attacks, to slowly kill enemies from afar. Has powerful musical buffs.

Seal Clubber

• This class relies on Muscle which boosts their HPs significantly higher than other classes. Furthermore, muscle determines their hit ability with melee weapons and also increases damage. They generally aim to hit hard and kill quickly before the foe can inflict much damage in return.
• Seal Clubbers have both passive and active skills which increase their melee capability significantly, including the ability to dual wield weapons at higher levels.
• They are able to summon Infernal Seals and engage them in combat which drop varying rewards without using adventures. Make sure to have a club equipped before you encounter them.
• Seal Clubbers are experts at making advanced weapons. Chrome weapons are very useful, as they give 3 bonus adventures the next day.
• At highest levels, Seal Clubbers are able to Pulverize equipment into wads, powders, and nuggets which are useful for buffing and bonus adventures.

Turtle Tamer

• This class relies on Muscle which boosts their HPs significantly higher than other classes. Furthermore, muscle determines their hit ability with melee weapons and also increases damage. They generally aim to hit hard and kill quickly before the foe can inflict much damage in return. With the correct skill, the Turtle Tamer can use his muscle for defense in place of moxie when using a shield.
• The Turtle Tamer's skills are generally more defensive in nature than his Seal Clubber counterpart and include a number of both passive and active defensive boosts.
• The Turtle Tamer has three skills which affect their familiar, one attack and two weight boosters.
• Turtle Tamers have three auto-hit combat skills, which can be chained together into up to three skills in a single round. Their power is dependent on the strength of your equipment.
• Turtle Tamers can create advanced armor and shields.
• Turtle Tamers have the special ability to find and tame turtles, which results in special rewards which do not require adventures to obtain.
• The duration of the Turtle Tamer's buffs depend on the quality of their totems. Their initial turtle totem provide 5 turns per cast, but can be improved to provide up to 20 turns per cast.

Pastamancer

• This class is based on Mysticality which means they have neither the hard hitting and high damage output of muscle classes, nor the defensive abilities of the Moxie class. Thus, they generally rely on their large MP pool to cast powerful spells to disable and kill their foes.
• Entangling Noodles should be used in almost every fight due to its ability to disable a foe for 2-4 rounds.
• A Pastamancer's combat spells inflict damage based on a random element. However, there are several ways to 'tune' their spells to a particular element.
• An important concept to casters is that of Bonus Spell Damage. By wielding certain equipment and buffs, a Pastamancer is able to deal far more damage with a spell than the baseline.
• Pastamancers have easier access to Chefstaves than Saucerors. Chefstaves provide powerful spell damage bonus and MP regeneration.
• Pastamancers have the ability to cook Pasta dishes, summon dry noodles for cooking, and they even gain extra MP recovery from eating Pasta dishes.
• At highest levels, they are capable of using the Wok of Ages to create exceptional foods, at the cost of Meat and adventures.
• They may summon Pasta Guardians which act similar to a second familiar. However, you must acquire their initial forms, and bonded Guardians will disappear with ascension. They can be summoned up to 10 times a day, but eventually you will be able to summon them more often and even switch out between different Guardians without losing contact.

Sauceror

• This class is based on Mysticality which means they have neither the hard hitting and high damage output of muscle classes, nor the defensive abilities of the Moxie class. Thus, they generally rely on their large MP pool to cast powerful spells to disable and kill their foes.
• Most Sauceror spells are either hot or cold based. This can be tuned to a particular element in several ways if desired.
• An important concept to casters is that of Bonus Spell Damage. By wielding certain equipment and buffs, a Sauceror is able to deal far more damage with a spell than the baseline, as well as gain beneficial 'splashback' effects from their spells. Wave of Sauce has a splashback effect which regenerates MP when you cast a spell with the same element next turn. Proper usage of this will let the Sauceror almost never run out of MP.
• The Sauceror's saucespheres not only deal damage if you take damage, but also gives you some HP and MP when you cast a sauce spell.
• Saucerors have the ability to summon reagents which they can use to cook, or to create special potions which provide powerful buffs. Saucerors gain a longer duration from consuming such potions.
• The duration of the Sauceror's buffs depend on the quality of their saucepans. Their initial saucepan provide 5 turns per cast, but can be improved to provide up to 20 turns per cast.

Disco Bandit

• This class relies on high Moxie to avoid being hit in the first place. If you are able to keep your moxie about 9 points higher than the foe's attack value, you will only be hit if the monster achieves a critical hit.
• Moxie classes comes with 2 free skills: Moxious Maneuver deals damage based on Moxie. Pickpocket lets you attempt to steal an item on the first turn if you gain initiative. Some items can only be obtained by pickpocketing.
• Disco Bandits can acquire special combat skills that delevel opponents, reducing their ability to attack and defend. Furthermore, by executing certain moves in a specific order, they can achieve Disco Combos which provide bonuses.
• The Disco Bandit specializes in mixing drinks. Their class skills enable them to create special cocktails that provide higher bonuses than most regular drinks.
• Disco Bandits should use ranged weapons which rely on Moxie to hit. Damage is still based on Muscle, so they deal damage at a rather slow pace. This Combat Style is referred to as plinking.
• Disco Bandits have skills to boost their item and meat drops, as well as a decent healing skill and use multiple combat items per round.
• At highest levels, Disco Bandits have the ability to use Nash Crosby's Still to improve drink-making components and create superhuman cocktails. It can be used up to 10 times per day.

Accordion Thief

• This class relies on high Moxie to avoid being hit in the first place. If you are able to keep your moxie about 9 points higher than the foe's attack value, you will only be hit if the monster achieves a critical hit.
• Moxie classes comes with 2 free skills: Moxious Maneuver deals damage based on Moxie. Pickpocket lets you attempt to steal an item on the first turn if you gain initiative. Some items can only be obtained by pickpocketing.
• Accordion Thieves should use ranged weapons which rely on Moxie to hit. Damage is still based on Muscle, so they deal damage at a rather slow pace. This Combat Style is referred to as plinking.
• Accordion Thieves are much like a 'bard'. Their skills are all considered 'buffs'. Up to three of these buffs be on a player at any given time. Furthermore, ATs are able to buff other players in addition to themselves which can make them a more multi-player-friendly class at high levels. Much of the challenge of playing the AT is picking the best buffs to be active at any given time, and managing the MP usage of them.
• Note that the duration of each buff is dependent on the quality of their instrument. The starting item, Stolen accordion gives 5 adventure duration per casting so be sure to not discard this item! As you adventure, buff duration can be increased up to 20 adventures per casting.
• At high levels, the Accordion Thief has the ability to shop from any guild's store, very useful for buying myst-class restores.