Class selection strategy

In KoL, not all character classes are created equal. While a dedicated ascender will eventually play as all six classes, certain ones will almost always have advantages or disadvantages.

Early in their KoL careers, players will usually choose their class based on what skills they want to perm for their next ascension. When you've got enough skills under your belt, this is no longer a factor, and other things are taken into account.

This page is aimed at players who are selecting a class based on its ascension utility, and not its skills. If you're picking a class based on the skills you'd like to perm, check out Hardcore Skill Analysis. Remember that you can "bank" Karma by doing several runs of your favorite class, then do a single run of another class and buy several of its skills at once.

Class-Specific Powers

Each class has certain intrinsic bonuses granted by their mainstat or specific class; these bonuses are only available while you are currently a member of that class. In VERY rough order from most useful to least useful:

• Disco Bandit: Disco Combos can be challenging to bring to bear, but directly result in extra stats, items, and Meat. Pickpocketing is also a valuable source of item drops, though it can be challenging to get the jump on monsters at extremely high levels of +ML.
• (SC) Pastamancer: For softcore ascensions, the angel hair wisp's bonus as applied to cave bars single-handedly gives Pastamancers the best class-specific powers. If your path makes that strategy irrelevant, P's bonuses are much less useful.
• Accordion Thief: MMJ is an amazing quality-of-life tool, but their real utility lies in being the only class that can make advanced potions in-run. Pickpocketing is still very relevant as well.
• Sauceror: Better yields from reagent potions will stretch your goat's milk/etc. further, but Sauce Synergy is the main attraction. The innate +50% max MP helps with Inigo's and other expensive buffs.
• Seal Clubber: Infernal Seals provide a non-trivial number of free stats. Their class-specific combat powers tend to not be relevant at high-end play, where killing stuff in combat is just a matter of how much MP it consumes.
• (HC) Pastamancer: Pastamancers have very little going for them outside of softcore. The stat ghost is still useful, but on a much smaller scale. Otherwise, the passive +50% MP is their only bonus.
• Turtle Tamer: Unfortunately, TTs have even less appeal in this category. Turtle Taming is almost entirely useless for high-end gameplay.

Class Guilds

The bonuses provided by each of the three guilds are very different. In rough order from most useful to least useful:

• Myst (P, S): MMJ means a lot less fiddling with familiars to restore your MP in a pinch. Hardcore players usually won't be able to make any chefstaffs in-run, and food from The Wok of Ages is rarely better than booze from the Still when you need the turngen, but the cost of unlocking this guild is very low, since you'll be in the necessary zone anyway.
• Moxie (DB, AT): It's all about Nash Crosby's Still. If you need turngen, this is the best guild. You probably won't use The Shadowy Store in a high-end ascension. That said, however, unlocking this guild requires spending turns (usually free runaways) in The Sleazy Back Alley.
• Muscle (SC, TT): The Malus of Forethought might get you some wads before you're otherwise able to get them, but that's about it. The store's only useful bonus is +30% init (which is useful, but kind of expensive) and rarely the +Muscle from blood of the Wereseal.

Other Considerations

The two categories above are the most obvious differences between the classes, but not always the most impactful. In rough order from most impactful to least impactful:

• Hardcore Powerleveling: While Muscle classes get the best per-turn yields from their Spookyraven zone, it has the high overhead cost of unlocking it. In general, powerleveling returns from best to worst are Moxie > Myst > Muscle.
• Hardcore Equipment: The spangly sombrero, frequently obtained via faxing, is only relevant to Moxie classes.
• Equipment Requirements: In softcore, Muscle classes can equip +ML shirts the earliest, and Myst classes can equip +ML accessories the earliest. Only Moxie and Myst are needed to equip the Frat Warrior Fatigues, so Muscle classes may need to level both offstats.
• The Florist Friar: You spend the most turns in outdoor zones and the least in underground zones, ranking the Florist's +exp plants as Moxie > Muscle > Myst.
• Palindome synergy: The unskippable noncombat Sun at Noon, Tan Us only helps Moxie classes.
• Barrr synergy: That Explains All The Eyepatches is best for Moxie and Muscle classes (it can't be converted into a combat if you're a Myst class).

History

• Moxie classes had an edge when fighting scaling monsters before September 18, 2013, due to how stat gains from those monsters were calculated.

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