User talk:Hellion

Interesting guide; learned a few things reading through it. You should put a link from the softcore Ascension Strategy page to here, in a "See Also" section at the bottom. I've done some changes to that page recently I wouldn't have bothered with had I known your guide was in the works, as you already cover those areas fully.

Your initial burst of writing seems to have died down recently. Would you mind if I made some trivial edits to the document? Stuff like fixing broken links and filling in placeholders (like where you list the best drinks but have [[]] for a couple). Too much wiki work lately has me in the habit of automatically fixing things in documents I'm studying. --Greg1104 16:30, 26 May 2006 (CDT)

What are your thoughts on Knob Goblin learning pills in a softcore speed run? I spend a chunk of my early adventures in the treasury to get all the components to the Elite outfit so I can have Big Veiny Brain active for most of the run. I normally adventure until I have two of the three parts to the outfit and then pull the 3rd. There's little sense pulling all the components because you need time in the Knob to find the key anyway. --Greg1104 16:40, 26 May 2006 (CDT)

Thanks for the comments. Yeah, my efforts to polish it up have dropped off dramatically with the news of NS13's semi-impending arrival. If you want to tack in some of the details, please feel free.

On the learning pills, I'd have to say they're completely unnecessary, having never used them.  :-) If you are lucky (or unlucky) enough to acquire the entire outfit while getting the harem outfit, sure, but I wouldn't make any special effort for them. --Hellion 23:08, 26 May 2006 (CDT)

On the contrary, knowing the game is going to expand has increased my intensity recently. As I focus almost exclusively on hardcore, but am way behind the permanent skillset of the typical player (too much time in Oxy when I was busy last year), I'm trying to get as many more skills as possible before the runs get any longer.

Anyway, finished the edits that were bugging me. Mostly just link fixes and the like. The only place I hacked at your text was near the end, in the section talking about ordering within the Cyrpt/Friar sections; that was hard to read and really got to me, so I rewrote it for you before it drove me crazy.

Now that I've worked my way through carefully, comments. You have a couple of spots where you distinguish between what makes sense for a 2-day run, versus what would go into a 3+ day one. I would suggest extracting some of that into a separate section addressing what to do different if you're not skilled enough to hit 2 days; that's what I ended up needing to do when I created the Hardcore Location Analysis recently. Most of the comments I'm going to throw out here are in that category.

• Having the Elite Guard outfit and buying the Learning Pills gets you an extra 2 stats/turn, which is not insignificant, for 30 meat/turn; you also get 20% less meat during these turns. Buying Antiphon with Soda Water is around 45 meat/turn, practically the same stat gain per meat (15/stat) but without the meat penalty. Being able to buy as much Familiar Buffing spray as you want (with only its small penalty to your personal stats) has its own benefits as well. I would suggest that pulling parts to the Elite uniform is another one of those strategies that might be effective for less skilled 3+ day runs, where every pull isn't as critical. The player who doesn't have the full Sympathy/Leash/Empathy set yet will particularly benefit. But you certainly don't have pulls to spare on it during a 2-day run.
• I found the sections about TPS vs. DB drinks to be a little less detailed than I would have liked. Consider that your intended audience has likely never had a TPS before (I haven't) and therefore will need a little more info to understand why they might want to buy one. A little note explaining how the TPS gets re-used would help, as would an explanation that all the TPS fruits are hard to farm for. I scratched my head wondering why not just buy them at the Hippy store until I realized which fruits you need.
• You should suggest how to substitute for players who aren't committed enough to buy ice sickles yet, and what the implications are there. I've tried using a Hippo Whip instead, and the very low power of the item really makes it a lot harder; a warning about that would be helpful. I've also been picking signs where I have access to the Gnomes, so I can buy Torso Awareness, and doing a pull for the Goth Shirt as soon as I can equip it; that helps on longer, unskilled runs.
• If you've gotten lucky on your last day and expect to have leftover pulls, you might grab a Ring of Conflict for use in the Castle to speed that section up. Having the wheel-based adventure pop up a lot more can be a huge help.
• New players who want to trade real-world money to speed up their early runs can execute this strategy: pay $10 to buy a Mr. A. Sell it at the mall, earning about 4.4M. Use proceeds to buy 6 Breathtastic Canned Airs, selling for around 0.73M each. Pull 3xBreathtastic and you get an extra 67 or so adventures that day, plus the stat gains.

--Greg1104 06:51, 27 May 2006 (CDT)

Possessives

• yes, you have a point. the style guides i've seen on the web make the point that consistency is everything. j&s are, of course, the only standards we should respect. being a brit i suspect that this is, at bottom, a potayto/potahto thing, though. i'd never dream of correcting color or theater, although i might object if an american claimed colour or theatre were wrong. i'd probably change it back if they were rude about it, thinking about it. oh well. btw, this writing comments in a person's talk page falls down at this point, since lucyspace2 may not see this. --Evilkolbot 16:08, 5 June 2006 (CDT)
  • I was rude about it? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be.. :( --LucySpace 17:13, 5 June 2006 (CDT)

Galaxy

• the sense in this case was obviously the Galaxy, ie the one we're in, commonly known as the Milky Way. i accept that The Galaxy was wrong, but surely it's a galaxy and the Galaxy. --Evilkolbot 13:23, 17 July 2006 (CDT)

Hot buttered roll

Hey, sorry about that hot buttered roll reference. I just saw the album's article on wikipedia, and immediately thought of "hot buttered roll" and figured KoL was referencing it. Goes to show you how KoL-addicted I am...--Nucular 03:20, 18 September 2006 (CDT)