User:Stupac2/familiars and skills

Familiars

Non-Mr. Store

Don’t have any Mr. Store familiars? Think you can’t ascend? Well sure you can! Mr. Store stuff helps, but isn’t totally necessary.

Blood-faced volleyball - The volley is your general go-to familiar. It gives extra stats, and that’s it. But stats are always needed, so you’ll basically always want this guy out.

Hovering sombrero - Gives stats based on weight and ML.

Baby Gravy Fairy - The exception is when you want items. When you want items, take the fairy. If you’ve previously ascended muscle sign and done the Summon a Mushroom Familiar quest, you may want to use your elemental fairy, as it will help during combat.

Leprechaun - There are a few times you’ll want extra meat, such as against the bodyguard bats, or during the nuns sidequest in the war. You’ll want a leprechaun for those times.

Jumpsuited Hound Dog - The reward for collecting 100 filthy lucre, the hound dog acts as a 1.25*weight fairy, and provides +floor(weight/6)% combats (up to 5%). You want to use him wherever you need items and aren’t using -combat (for more on +/-combat, see the Combat Modifiers part of the guide).

Star Starfish - Useful for MP, you can get large amounts by using the starfish for one combat, doing little damage yourself (using spices, for example), and letting the starfish convert all the enemy HP into MP. This is called the Star Starfish Trick. You also need the starfish in the Naughty Sorceress Quest.

Sorceress familiars - These familiars are the Sabre-Toothed Lime, Barrrnacle, Levitating Potato, Mosquito, and the Angry Goat. You won’t really be using these in combat, but you need one of each to ensure getting past the NS.

That’s basically it. When you want items, take the fairy, when you don’t take the volley. Early on you won’t be running enough ML to make the sombrero worth it. Once you are (if you’re running ~70 it starts to be worth using in the cyrpt) whip the sombrero out.

Sandworm/Llama/Pixie

These three are generally grouped together, because they let you effectively use your spleen, along with other benefits.

Baby Sandworm - As years go by spleen familiars give you your spleen more and more easily. The pixie requires a bunch of turns and switching between zones, and the llama requires forgoing certain abilities and using others a number of times in a short timeframe. But the sandworm has no hassle, the agua de vida it drops simply gives you 5-10 adventures for 4 spleen. However, there are a couple of caveats. When it drops agua the sandworm (which is normally a sombrero) gives you no stats. Additionally, the agua itself gives no stats, and the 7.5 turns/4 spleen is a worse average than either !pipes or roc feathers. This means that roc feathers are still optimal in turns of stats. But many people (including myself) consider the ease of use to make them far superior.

Llama Lama - The llama is a half-weight volleyball (which means it provides 70% as many stats) that will delevel during combat. Those things are pretty underwhelming, the joy of the llama comes from the gongs. The main use of these is birdform. Birdform gives you Talon slash, an instant-hit attack that does ~80% of muscle in damage for 5 MP, as well as allows all classes to pickpocket, which can be quite valuable. Birdform lasts 15 turns, and allows you to get several feathers, the most useful of which is the glimmering roc feather, which is 6-10 adv for 4 spleen. It’s one of the four ways to fill your spleen in-run (the other three being !pipes, agua de vida and wads, although canned air is a potential (expensive) option). The nice thing about getting these feathers is that if you play your cards right it costs you 0 adv, so they’re effectively free. Gongs are also useful for Path of the Roach, which gives stats and 20 turns of a special effect (+ML, +item, or +%stats). The gongs are very versatile and incredibly useful.

Because you cannot use combat items or non-birdform skills while in birdform, it takes some thinking to time correctly (incidentally, you *can* use combat skills granted by items and familiars in birdform). You don't want to be in birdform when you need to use rock band fliers, or pirate insults, or olfaction. Additionally, needing to get 15 talon slashes in 15 turns means you need to be careful about adventuring someplace that has many noncombat adventures (such as spookyraven, or the desert/oasis). When getting feathers I usually make sure to use multiple talon slashes per combat, ensuring that I get my feather. Talon slash is a rather good combat skill (especially before you have shieldbutt), so using it 20-30 times isn't too bad (if you can't afford the MP, try getting the Mental A-cue-ity buff from A Pool Table. However, given the ease of acquiring agua from the sandworm, my llama has been effectively retired in Softcore (although it still is very useful in hardcore).

Green Pixie - The pixie is a full-weight fairy that attacks. Again this is pretty underwhelming, the main draw of the pixie is the absinthe it drops. Absinthe opens up The Worm Wood and provides lots of options. The first of which is the not-a-pipe, which gives 4-12 adv for 4 spleen. The problem with the !pipe is that they take 3 adv to get, meaning on average you only gain 5. On the other hand you do get a ton of MP from getting it, which is useful. Still, this drawback is why most speedy players use absinthe exclusively for stats, in what’s called 5/1 or just 1. This comes from the fact that the non-combats that grant you things in the Worm Wood only happen on certain intervals, with 9-7, 5-4, and 1 turn of the Absinthe-Minded effect left. Knowing this means you only have to spend turns then when it’s most advantageous, and depending on how much you need the stats, one or two is almost always enough. If you’re curious and want to see all that Worm Wood has to offer, and how to get it, see Worm Wood Done Quickly. The one thing to note is that if you’re doing 5/1 or 1, you’ll have to anticipate how many stats you need way ahead of time, since you have to play all 10 turns of Absinthe Minded.

How to use these two: the pixie is easy, if you don’t have a hound dog use the pixie every time you want +item. You’ll get enough absinthe from using it this way to meet all your uses. The llama is trickier since he’s not the best familiar to actually have out. You tend to take the llama out until you get 2-3 gongs, then put him back. The drop rates are low enough that it can be pretty capricious, it’s judgment about how much you need the gong versus the stats a better familiar would provide. As with all judgments, no one can make it for you.

GGG/Hobo

The GGG and Spirit Hobo are both volleyballs that act like starfish when fed. The hobo takes booze and the GGG takes food, and they give you a number of “blasts” of MP equivalent to the adventure gain of the food/booze. That’s the starfish part of their name. They’re both pretty fun to use, and once you have some buffs to fuel very handy as well, keeping one out as your primary familiar makes fueling your buffs a piece of cake. When not going terribly fast using them as a primary stat familiar is feasible, but on fast runs they’re only occasionally used for MP. If you’re in dire MP straights you can bring them out and use the Star Starfish Trick to get a ton of MP from the combat.

Slimeling

The Slimeling is the most useful non-Mr Store familiar. By far. It's not even close. The slimeling is basically a GGG/Hobo that eats equipment and gives +item instead of +stats. As such you can use it whenever you would typically use some other fairy (hound dog or pixie, most likely) and get massive amounts of MP. The slimeling should be your primary fairy once you get one (at least in the places where running a hound dog is bad/unnecessary), the MP is really that good.

Bander

The Frumious Bandersnatch is quite the impressive familiar. A full volley whose equipment sends all stats to the chosen stat, it also improves combat skills and grants free runaways with Ode to Booze active. I’ll talk about the runaways later, and I’m not going to go into detail on the combat skills (their utility is obvious and they’re listed on the familiar page), what’s game-changing about this familiar is the stat distribution. If you don’t care about offstats (which we don’t) this makes the bander into a quadruple-weight volleyball. This makes it much more effective than other volleys, and more effective than a hovering sombrero for almost all realistic scenarios. For the math behind this, see: here.

He-Boulder

The He-Boulder is the most powerful mechanic out of the Mr. Store since the bandersnatch. The boulder itself is a leprechaun/whelp, but that's largely irrelevant. The reason for its awesomeness is its rays: yellow, red, and blue. There are two types of each ray, major and minor. The major rays are very powerful, especially the yellow ray, which instantly kills an enemy and gives you all of its non-Conditional Drops (this does not work against any boss monster). The major red ray gives you some amount of substats (based on boulder weight). The major blue ray stuns an enemy for 3 rounds. In order to use these abilities you must use the skill Point at your opponent immediately after seeing the combat message indicating which ray is primed. You can only use major rays so often, they recharge at a rate of 150 adventure normally, and 101 adventures with the Quadroculars equipped. Each ray type is independent, using a major red ray will not affect the counter for the major yellow or blue.

The main use of the boulder is the yellow ray, which has huge strategy implications. Pulling the Knob Goblin Harem Girl Disguise, Knob Goblin perfume, and Mining Gear is a thing of the past, as is using a semirare to get the Knob Goblin Elite Guard Uniform. There are plenty of other good targets for the ray as well, including the Filthy Hippy Disguise (which also gets you a reodorant for Sonofa Beach, and either war hippy while starting the war (for the War Hippy Fatigues in order to do the putty nuns trick, mentioned later). Other potential uses are for mojo filters, tower items, and any other item that might not drop and you'd have to pull. For a discussion on the yellow ray, see here.

Baby Bugged Bugbear

The Baby Bugged Bugbear is the most interesting familiar to come out of the Mr. Store since the He-Boulder. It's always a full-weight potato, and without an equipment (or with the bugged beanie, which you get for free by visiting the arena) it acts as a ghuol/volleyball/fairy/leprechaun randomly at the end of combat. But that's not what's important. With the bugged balaclava (which you get for free by using the beanie) on it always acts as a volleyball, and the balaclava gives +20 ML. This means that, for equal weights, it gives more stats than a bander until 25 lbs, afterward it's not beaten too badly, and it gives a lot more offstats. Additionally the potato makes handling the ML significantly easier.

So which is better? It's a tough comparison. First off, the jubs all have +5 lbs and the balaclava doesn't, so the equal weight comparison isn't apt. It turns out that a tuned bander is giving more mainstat at +15 non-equipment lbs, which is to say immediately. Additionally, leveling the bander is incredibly easy, using a skill such as Cannelloni Cannon (+1 fam weight/cast) to damage monsters before VCrisis and using Curiosity of Br'er Tarrypin, you can be getting more than 3 experience/combat.

But this works both ways, you can put loads of weight on the bander (without pulling the jub) to still get runaways, and use the BBB as your primary stat familiar. The thing is that splitting like that will lose you stats (although not many), and getting the bander heavy will take a lot of MP, and combat without the bander will also take a lot of MP. With the advent of the crown of thrones (see below) the MP needed to run the BBB and level the bander for runaways is a lot less of an issue, and the ability to run sickle/pilgrim shield makes the lost stats a lot less of an issue. Thanks to the crown the BBB is more compelling for 2-day SC.

So what's the takeaway? If you don't have and can't afford the bander using the BBB means you're not missing out on a lot of stat gain. But at the same time the bander is significantly better if you just want easy combat, and its runaways can't be replicated.

Others

There are a few other familiars worth using in the course of an ascension, but mostly for niche stuff.

Volleychaun - The volleychaun is one of the two 2-Mr-A familiars available year-round. The current example is the hungover chauvinist pig. They’re useful early in the game against bosses that drop a lot of meat, mostly the bodyguard bats and boss bat. Those few combats are the only time that I use mine, but there are potentially others (such as the nuns).

Hobo monkey - Speaking of the nuns, the best familiar for that side-quest is the hobo monkey. A 1.25*lep, no other fam will get you as much meat drop (at least without farming/pulling a hat for the hatrack).

Crimbo P. R. E. S. S. I. E. - A great familiar for low-skill runs if you don’t have something better. Few other familiars are as fun to play with or do as much, and you can seamlessly convert between volley and sombrero using its equipment (however, a pressie in sombrero mode is basically a sombrero with fireworks equipped).

Crown of Thrones

The crown of thrones is a weird beast, since it's a hat that acts like a familiar slot. Because it's not easy to summarize what it does and how to use it quickly I'm giving it its own section here. First, the basics. You can enthrone any of your familiars upon the crown, and that familiar will gain 1 experience per combat as though it were your active familiar. In addition it provides the crown with some enchantment, such as +10 ML or +10 to all stats. In even further addition that familiar will act during combat, doing things like giving MP or HP, attacking, or giving items.

The familiar that will be in the crown most often is the El Vibrato Megadrone. The reason is simple, it gives +10 ML as its enchantment (which is only 0.5 stats worse than the previous best hat, the spooky putty mitre) and it also gives 10-15 MP per round for the first 3 combat rounds. That's an enormous amount of MP, enough to run basically any buff you want.

The second most useful familiar is the Mariachi Chihuahua. It gives +2 moxie stats/combat (which is 0.5 mainstat more than the mitre on a moxie run), as well as providing a 50% block rate. This is phenomenal for crisis. Any time you don't need MP, run the chihuahua.

There are some other more niche uses, such as the Green Pixie for tequila (~20% drop rate, once/combat), the Sweet Nutcracker or the Ancient Yuletide Troll for a gingerbread bugbear if you need some decent filler food, the Astral Badger if you need a spooky mushroom, and probably some others.

Combat

About 70% of the game is combat, so it’s important that you have a way to kill stuff. Fortunately, there’s an incredibly powerful duo of skills that let you kill all monster and adventure way above your level with ease.

Shieldbutt/Noodles

With NS13 every dominant strategy was nerfed into oblivion, and from their ashes rose noodlebutt. It’s incredibly simple, entangling noodles makes your foe unable to attack for several rounds of combat, and shieldbutt allows you to hit with both your weapon and your shield, and causes extra damage (and a chance to delevel/stun). These two together are so powerful that they’re all you need to wear over 100 ML and still survive (although you’ll get hit a lot). Combined with a navel ring (on lazier runs) and you’ll nearly never need to heal. Together these two are all you need, but some +initiative skills (Springy Fusilli, Cletus's Canticle of Celerity, and Overdeveloped Sense of Self Preservation) help too. If this sounds too simple or good to be true it’s because it really is just that good and simple.

Spell-Slinging

While shieldbutt is still the combat method of choice for most situations, thanks to recent game changes spell-slinging is a potential combat strategy again. Unfortunately, it works best as a sauceror, but with a Bag o' Tricks can potentially rival shieldbutt in damage/MP.

The necessary perms are any spell (sauceror spells are best, Stream of Sauce, Saucestorm, Wave of Sauce, and Saucegeyser), as well as Entangling Noodles (always need noodles), Intrinsic Spiciness, Flavour of Magic, Immaculate Seasoning, Jabañero Saucesphere (skill), Jalapeño Saucesphere (skill) and potentially Jackasses' Symphony of Destruction. The idea is for the Saucespheres to return HP and MP from each spell cast, to get the synergies with the bandersnatch, and (as a sauceror) to use splashbacks to get massive amounts of MP restored (see here for full details, the whole thread has important info).

As you can see the downside of spell-slinging is that it requires a lot of skills, most of which are only useful for that skillset. However, with the bag o' tricks and a bandersnatch, noodles and stream will probably be enough to handle enemies without much trouble. Adding on the extras just makes you more effective (similar to how shiledbutt gets more effective with +damage skills). Nonetheless, if you want to be able to play as a sauceror and have every combat be MP-positive and have a full-weight bandersnatch at level 6, you'll need most of those perms.

Toy Mercs

If for some reason you really don’t want to shieldbutt or spellsling, there’s also the Toy Merc strategy, due entirely to IstariAsuka (as far as I know). It requires only a few permed skills, and very little investment (although the V mask would be very helpful, as it gives +50% damage to combat items). Anyway, the skill list is basically the same as shieldbutt, you just replace shieldbutt with Ambidextrous Funkslinging. Just make sure not to use the mercs against the NS or the Bonerdagon, as you can lose them.

Skills

One of the most frequently-asked questions is what order to get skills in, or which skills to get next. In my view the order doesn’t actually matter so much (outside of a few). But there’s a huge list of skills to get, look through them all, decide which ones sound the most helpful to you, and perm them. Then move on to the ones that are less helpful, and keep going until you’ve got everything you could ever want. That’s my strategy.

Noodles/butt

But you definitely want to take shieldbutt and entangling noodles first. My inclination is to get shieldbutt first, as a low-skill muscle class ascension without noodles is easier than a low-skill myst ascension without shieldbutt. You also get entangling noodles very early in an ascension, meaning you’d only be doing one ascension without both, whereas getting noodles first you wouldn’t get shieldbutt until the tail end of your second. But it’s a small difference, and not terribly important.

Guild Skills

My suggestion for your third perm is Ode to booze. Previously I said that order doesn’t really matter, and that’s true, but ode is the only skill that generates turns without anything else. It’s quite useful, because generating 1000 turns in four days (breaking Ronin in four days) is tricky without ode, but much simpler with it.

After that things are up in the air, I’ll talk about each class’s best skills below.

Seal Clubber - Pulverize, Rage of the Reindeer, Musk of the Moose, Eye of the Stoat, and Double-Fisted Skull Smashing are the most useful skills, approximately in order. None of them are terribly high priority, if you wait until ascension 20 or 30 to grab one, you won’t suffer for it.

Turtle Tamer - Shieldbutt, Amphibian Sympathy, Empathy of the Newt, Tao of the Terrapin, Hero of the Half-Shell, Wisdom of the Elder Tortoises, and Astral Shell are all top-notch skills. If that seems like a huge list it’s because TT’s have some of the best in the game. Even ones not listed there (Reptilian Fortitude, Ghostly Shell) are worth perming, but of lower priority.

Pastamancer - Entangling Noodles, Leash of Linguini, Springy Fusilli, Cannelloni Cocoon, and Pastamastery are all good perms, the remaining skills are more marginal.

Sauceror - Advanced Saucecrafting, The Way of Sauce, Impetuous Sauciness, and Saucy Salve are my picks here, though the latter two aren’t high priority (Sauciness is nice for basement runs and when you use potions, salve helps with Vcrisis, and with the bandersnatch heals negative status effects). Stream of Sauce is useful for taking down physically-resistant monsters, and Expert Panhandling can give you an extra bit of meat.

Disco Bandit - Mad Looting Skillz, SHC, AC, Smooth Movement, and Ambidextrous Funkslinging are the top picks here, and Overdeveloped Sense of Self Preservation, Disco Power Nap, and Nimble Fingers are useful but not necessary.

Accordion Thief - Damn near everything. The Ode to Booze, Fat Leon's Phat Loot Lyric, Ur-Kel's Aria of Annoyance, The Sonata of Sneakiness, Carlweather's Cantata of Confrontation, Aloysius' Antiphon of Aptitude, The Moxious Madrigal, The Power Ballad of the Arrowsmith, The Magical Mojomuscular Melody, and The Polka of Plenty all merit some consideration. Actual order is tricky, the earlier skills (Madrigal in particular) are usually permed pretty early in HC, but can be put off in SC. I’ll leave it up to you to decide what to get when.

Other Skills

Natural Born Scrabbler, Torso Awaregness, Powers of Observatiogn, and Transcendent Olfaction are the most pressing non-guild skills. Olfaction isn’t a perm, but is listed to remind you to get your lucre. You want that skill, it’s among the best in the game.

Traveling Trader skills: In 2010 the traveling trader returned and brought with him several skills. The first, Käsesoßesturm, is not particularly noteworthy. The second, Inigo's Incantation of Inspiration (skill), is very much noteworthy. It is an AT buff that costs 100 MP/cast and allows you to craft without using turns, instead 5 turns of the effect disappear. This is very powerful, as it allows you to craft food and booze without needing to pull a bartender or chef or wasting turns. Now, because it's an AT buff you get more crafts/cast if you use better accordions or the JEW Hat. Now while this mechanic is very powerful and is heavily used on speed runs, if your runs are 4 days or longer it won't be very useful for you. Using Inigo's well is rather fiddly, and unless saving the two pulls is vital you shouldn't really bother. But if you're doing a speed run absolutely use it.

The third skill is Curiosity of Br'er Tarrypin (skill), which gives you a TT buff that gives +1 fam experience/combat for 10 MP. This is a desirable skill, but not hugely important.

Mr. Store Skills

These are Summon Party Favor, Summon Love Song, Summon Candy Heart, Summon Stickers, Summon Snowcones, Summon Sugar Sheets and Summon "Tasteful" Gifts. Most likely you won’t have Snowcones, which means choosing between summoning stickers and sheets. There are some disagreements about which is better, but outside of a leaderboard run the general advice is to summon a shirt on day 1 (provided you have torso) as well as a shield, use the shield for extra +item as well as runaways, and use the shirt until it breaks for an extra 90 stats. After day 1 summoning a shirt a day and maybe a shield if you need it, with the rest as stickers is more or less the way to go. You want to get at least 3 UPCs for the nuns and 3 Unicorns for the filthworms/rats (if you're doing them), so keep that goal in mind as you summon.

If you have tasteful items, summon them daily, a few are useful (though they become much more useful with Disco Power Nap permed). Finally, the 3 Libram skills are tricky. If you only have one just summon those, a decent number per day, and use them as needed. If you have more than one exactly what to do is nontrivial. The way party favors work means you generally want to summon a few per day, until you get two rares (the odds of summoning a rare halve each time you summon one, and since with divines you’re really looking for the divine champagne popper, you don’t need a ton of summons per day), and then switching to the other ones. If you have a pretty small MP pool hearts is probably better than love songs, since the utility of the songs is pretty low with only a few summons. I tend to summon divines until 2 rares every day, then finish with hearts on day 1, and finish with love songs after that. But it’s not a real open-and-shut thing, play around with them and see what works for you.

Advanced Strategy

The guide continues at Advanced Strategy.