Actually Ed the Undying/Strategy

This page describes strategies for the Actually Ed the Undying challenge path.

Astral Consumables

• Considering Ed needs to buy a stomach and liver in the first place, astral energy drinks seem to be the most obvious solution. However, you will have to upgrade your spleen capacity at least once to consume it, although this costs less than the stomach and liver upgrades. Energy drinks can save you at least 75 Ka coins worth of spleen in the long run, but even at level 11+ the drinks provide the same adventures per spleen as the mummified loaf of bread, and are worse than the mummified beef haunch.
• When farming Ka coins stops being a major concern, astral pilsners can be taken purely for turngen.
• Due to requiring buying a stomach and Ed's low food capacity with it (you can only eat one a day), astral hot dogs are not recommended.

Astral Gear

• The astral ring improves Ed's spellcasting power and enough MP regen to get you through the early game. With the Staff of Ed equipped, you can cast Fist of the Mummy every combat without running into MP issues and having to spend precious Ka coins to restore MP.
• The astral shield increases Ed's durability significantly, allowing Ed to whittle down his enemy over a few fights.
• As usual, the astral mask is viable for its item drop bonus.

Skills

Intrinsic

• Minor Curse - Deals a minimal amount of Spooky damage. Only useful in very low-level zones or for dying on purpose.

Invocations

The Invocation tree contains buffs of various kinds.

• Prayer of Seshat - Grants +3 Mysticality stat points for 10 turns. An obvious first skill to learn, since you can start out with Minor Curse or attacking at Level 1.
• Wisdom of Thoth - Grants 10 + 50% Mysticality for 10 turns. This skill boosts your spell damage and allow you to hoard more MP for a measly 0.5 MP/Adv.
• Power of Heka - Grants bonus Spell Damage and Spell Critical Hit chance for 10 turns. While somewhat costly to maintain, this skill is useful for one-shotting bosses and high-ML monsters when you can afford to stack ML.
• Hide of Sobek - Grants some Damage Absorption and Reduction and slight Elemental Resistances for 10 turns. The extra durability might not be much, but this skill becomes more valuable for resistance tests after building some skill points after a few ascensions.
• Blessing of Serqet - Grants 20 ML for 10 turns.
• Shelter of Shed - Decreases combat rate for 10 turns.
• Bounty of Renenutet - Grants +50% Item Drops for 10 turns.

Evocations

The Evocation tree contains mostly combat spells initially focused on just dealing damage, but grants some valuable utility at later levels.

• Fist of the Mummy - A spell that deals physical damage. Since your Minor Curse won't be killing anything outside of the Pantry and Back Alley, you'll need to learn this skill to start dealing some damage. As a result, this skill should be learned right after Prayer of Sekhat.
• Howl of the Jackal - Deals Spooky damage.
• Roar of the Lion - Deals a large amount of Hot damage.
• Storm of the Scarab - Deals Prismatic damage.
• Purr of the Feline - A buff skill that improves Ed's servants for 10 turns.
• Lash of the Cobra - Deals minor damage and pickpockets the enemy.
• Wrath of Ra - Yellow Rays the enemy for 40 MP, with a ?-turn cooldown.

Curses

The Curse tree grants various types of skills to weaken monsters. While the earlier skills are hardly worth it considering Ed's properties and potential body upgrades, the last two skills are valuable monster queue manipulation skills. This tree is ignorable in the first few runs, but worth learning after obtaining some skill points.

• Curse of the Marshmallow - Debuffs the monster's Attack and Defense. Since Ed is a spellcaster and can revive, this skill is fairly useless.
• Curse of Indecision - Stuns monster for X rounds.
• Curse of Yuck - Deals poison damage each round.
• Curse of Heredity - Delevels and poisons the monster and every monster within its phylum once cast.
• Curse of Fortune - Spends a Ka coin to greatly improve Meat Drops. Only useful for the Nuns quest.
• Curse of Vacation - Banishes the monster for the rest of the day.
• Curse of Stench - Improves monster encounter rate like Olfaction.

Body Upgrades

Ed starts with an extra-small spleen and inability to eat or drink, therefore the first several Ka coins should be used to fix these issues. Upgrades that help Ed become self-sufficient or indirectly save turns are also valuable as well.

Upgrading Spleen before buying a Stomach/Liver is more cost-efficient until the third Spleen upgrade, but the sooner you can get your Stomach/Liver, the more turngen resources are available to you.

The Replacement Liver should be taken before the Replacement Stomach, because it allows you to nightcap.

An early Elemental Wards upgrade lets you forego trying to farm a bum cheek for the Bat Hole quest.

Because Ed is very fragile early, Upgraded Legs are a viable upgrade even before your Stomach/Liver because it prevents most monsters from killing you 3 times in a row and being penalized for continuing.

Servants

Every 3 levels, Ed can release a Servant for use. Servants can gain experience and levels like a regular familiar.

Ka coin farming

Zones with a high concentration of Dudes, Hippies, Hobos or Pirates allow farming much more Ka than typical zones. In order of difficulty/accessibility:

• The Sleazy Back Alley has 4 monsters, 2 of which drop 2 Ka, and 2 of which drop 1 Ka. It can be survived easily. It does have a few one-time unskippable noncombats.
• Camp Logging Camp is 100% 2-Ka Dudes, but has some unskippable noncombats. If you ascend under a Canadian sign, this zone can be useful once you can survive here.
• The Hippy Camp is 100% 2-Ka Hippies, and is 100% combat prior to level 9. You have to sink 9 turns unlocking the Island to get here, and you have to be able to survive.
• All of the pirate zones are 100% 2-Ka Pirates, with unskippable noncombats. However, unlike the other zones listed above, they are ascension-relevant. The Pirates are also far stronger opponents than those in the zones listed above.
• The Secret Government Laboratory, accessible to players who've purchased and used an airplane charter: Conspiracy Island, has 4 monsters, 3 of which are 2-Ka Dudes, and one of which is a 1-Ka Beast. There are no normal noncombats. The monsters are also very tough, however, especially for low-level players with few skills.

The early-ascension-relevant zones in The Mysterious Island of Mystery are populated exclusively by 2-Ka Hippies and Pirates, making them great farming zones. Therefore, tackle the Pirates Quest as soon as possible. The Filthy Hippy Disguise is much less useful when you have no access to Advanced Cocktailcrafting, but you can still pick it up to get a head start on the War.

If you need to powerlevel, the usual zones for powerleveling (The Hidden Temple and The Haunted Gallery) don't contain any monster that drop Ka coins. It's advisable to powerlevel in a different and more profitable zone instead and focus on raising ML to compensate instead.

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